


It's all a waste of time again

by campholmes



Category: RuPaul's Drag Race RPF
Genre: Addiction, Angst, Brian as some dude as usual, F/M, Katya as Russian immigrant Katie, Marriage, Orthodox Christianity (kinda), Unplanned Pregnancy, im writing cis straight people and thats my reality now i guess., the whole point of all this nonsense is pregnant Katya
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-19
Updated: 2019-05-06
Packaged: 2019-08-04 05:39:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 24,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16340807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/campholmes/pseuds/campholmes
Summary: “Brian-” she cuts him off when his lips are very near hers. His body stops moving before his mind does. His vision is a little blurred from half-sleep. Her red lips are a little smeared, and her mascara is running like she’s been crying. “I’ve been feeling sick.”“I know,” he whispers. She’s perched on his lap, nodding to his acknowledgement. She bites her bottom lip, stamping lipstick onto her big two front teeth. “You wanna talk about it?”(Brian and Katie become parents. Accidentally.)





	1. один

**Author's Note:**

> I've wanted to write pregnant Katya for years. It's my one truth. We all know how she does despise being called "Mom," but as a respectful adult I would like to push back on that and say that she does, absolutely, have a motherly aura, and in a Very Undeniably Sexy Way. Title is from Slow Nerve Action by the Flaming Lips, one of my favorite songs of all time off of one of my favorite albums of all time. Doesn't necessarily connect to this fic- I just like the feel of the song, and how it feels wrapped up with this particular Katie.
> 
> my tumblr is ourladykatya! if you enjoy this, please do head on over and consider [commissioning me](https://ourladykatya.tumblr.com/post/178636450023/hello-you-may-know-me-from-tumblr-or-from-ao3-as)! <3
> 
> in this chapter: warning for vague panic about physical illness, relapse, and death. Nothing major, just a run-through of what-could-be-wrong when someone you love is exhibiting symptoms.
> 
> [this fic also has a playlist.](https://open.spotify.com/user/ellen.eng/playlist/6lbFdzWHp0GSW40xU4IJmd?si=hEsxo8PsSSGA4RsRxyE2nA)

When Brian first met Katie, on Facebook at age twenty-seven, he did not expect that in two years she would have moved across the world to be with him, nor that she would have roped him into a marriage and a little house in a neighborhood full of hipsters and new parents.

He didn’t even know that she was wealthy enough to buy a plane ticket, let alone an entire home.

For all that Katie’s parents talk big shit about their dreams for her, he thinks that they aren’t so strict as they pretend to be for him, over Skype at three a. m., Brian and Katie’s time. They call her Katie almost with a vengeance, refusing any utterances of her given full name, so Brian only ever whispers _Katya_ when they are at the grocery store and she won’t leave the condom aisle.

Her parents convinced him to marry her- a financial decision, they had insisted, and Katie had shifted her knobby knee over to poke his thigh, her red ankle boot bumping his bare toes beneath the table. He didn’t really have a problem with it- only because once he saw her he could imagine nobody else, and he did need that cash. They’d been living together for a year at that point, and as Katie’s mother went on about how smart it would be for the both of them to just tie the knot, get it done with, he had nodded along numbly. 

Katie had laughed at him for an hour afterwards, nearly pissing herself on the bright orange couch. He had rolled his eyes, and bought her a mood ring for her ring finger the very next day.

Katie tends to have vivid dreams- not necessarily nightmares, but loud, thrashing dreams that require the engagement of her entire body and soul. Sometimes Brian is woken up by her half-open eyes boring into him across the pink sheets of the bed (his choice, refusing to sleep in red), or to her speaking long conversations in Russian or Japanese. He buys earplugs and tries not to imagine what would happen should the house catch on fire and the both of them not realize.

She was thirty when they met- her profile picture on Facebook featured her leaning against a dumpster and holding a smoldering cigarette, blonde curls flying, blue jacket with red fur trim open to show her romper beneath. He had laughed at it, had accepted her friend request immediately, and the rest was, quite literally, history. Both of them have since deleted Facebook, but Brian framed the picture of her and kept it beside his bed, until she moved into his shitty apartment a year ago and made him put it elsewhere.

The last thing he expected to have come about in just two years was a Russian girlfriend and then-wife. Everyone in his friend group who had jokingly called her a mail-order bride has since earned a blocked number, and his life has been better for it. She’s teased him that she may as well have been, that she doesn’t give a shit what they think, but he’d prefer to have her best interests at heart above all things. 

Something even more curious than having known his Russian wife for just two years is that said wife goes to church every Sunday like a good Russian Orthodox Christian, clothes conservative as they get to hide her tattoos, and then on top of that that his wife absolutely has drank his piss upwards of ten times. She absolutely refuses to entertain the idea that she is refuting God- insists with Brian’s dick all the way inside of her that she is the Holiest of women. 

He tends to agree, but he never tells her that on principle. She rarely needs encouragement. 

Katie is stubborn- so stubborn she can ride him forever without allowing him to come, just to feel him inside of her and sit there, just to sob and kiss his nipples and rub her lower stomach to massage his dick. The tattoos on her hips, barbed wire and lily of the valley, mesmerize him each time she stretches her skin from side to side. Her bellybutton is sloping and soft, her toned stomach and his name in Cyrillic beneath her left breast glow. 

When he marries her, she wears a headband with little doll eyes all around it. Brian’s mother keeps an eye on it the entire ceremony, dividing time from watching it to Katie’s bright red ankle boots, and back, and forth, and back again. Brian starts crying when he says his vows, written on an empty page of a recipe book that says “Mom’s Favorite” at the top, pre-printed. 

Katie doesn’t cry, but she does later after he’s fucked her gently in her wedding dress, lying naked on the bed with the quilt his mother angrily made them. He tries to open his mouth to ask if she is okay, but she lifts a finger to his lips, holds it there, until she can tell that he’s given up wanting to. And then she holds him very tenderly. 

 

“Brian. Please come help me, I do not understand-” Katie’s muffled words from behind the bedroom door rouse him from a light slumber on the couch. Work has been kicking his ass lately, and Katie is trying her best to cheer him up- baking him cakes, feeding him extra veggies, making him homemade tea out of God-knows-what remedy that she swears up and down will calm him when he comes home every day. So far, all it’s done has been taste too strong. 

He finds Katie, bleary-eyed and shuffling into the kitchen, hunched over the counter and squinting to read the recipe book before her. She’s been up at strange hours lately, fidgeting more, doing more yoga at three am than he thought was humanly possible. She’s been going to yoga classes more than usual, and she’s had him drive her to AA meetings every week- more than she’s ever gone in the time he’s known her. 

He’s asked her about it, and he’s shut up in turn when she kindly requested him to. The least he can do, he figures, is exactly what she asks of him.

“What does it say. Do you think I should add extra butter? How filthy are you feeling today, babe?” She pokes him in the stomach, and he grunts. He nods, because she’s asking if he’s in the mood (he always is if she is), and then she’s wrapping her skinny limbs around him, jumping up to be carried into the living room. 

“Brian-” she cuts him off when his lips are very near hers. His body stops moving before his mind does. His vision is a little blurred from half-sleep. Her red lips are a little smeared, and her mascara is running like she’s been crying. “I’ve been feeling sick.”

“I know,” he whispers. She’s perched on his lap, nodding to his acknowledgement. She bites her bottom lip, stamping lipstick onto her big two front teeth. “You wanna talk about it?”

There are so many things- he knows that she’s relapsed, that she’s dying of cancer, is certain that she’ll need brain surgery tomorrow, just knows that he’ll be in the hospital waiting room three hours from now, the doctor coming out from behind the door to look upon him with sick, dull eyes. Her hair is all over.

“I went to the doctor… I asked what was wrong with me. They did tests on me a little bit but I knew what it was. I didn’t want them to say it, the lady there, I didn’t want her to say it. I’m scared,” Katie’s eyes are wide, her mouth hanging open a little bit. She doesn’t look scared as in ashamed, but rather scared as in completely shocked- almost free of opinion, as if she’s saved the rawest reaction for him and only him. The doctor did not see this, he’s certain of it.

“Okay. You can tell me,” he says. His voice doesn’t shake, mostly because she’s jiggling her leg at light speed against his thigh and it’s driving him insane. He wants her to spit it out, for the most selfish of reasons.

“I’m having a baby. With you.” 

She puts her fingers up against his lips, as if he’s the one that looks as if he’s about to vomit. He can feel every emotion he’s ever felt fall down his spine. She releases some tension against him, grows heavier in his lap. 

“You-”

“I want it. I want our baby,” she says. He puts his hands on her hips. She isn’t done talking. He’s resisting the urge to place a palm on her flat stomach. She shifts, wiggles around a little. “I really do. Brian? I like that I’m having a baby.”

Her eyes are so wide he nearly laughs at her. It’s so like her, the complete shock at her own feeling of emotion. She snorts, laughs into his face, and he feels his joy bubble up inside of him until he’s screeching and grabbing her closer. 

“You’re fucking crazy,” he says. She sobs into his neck. “Come on. What do you want to eat?”

It’s not until they’re both sitting at the table, Katie eating fake chicken fingers from the freezer plain and Brian having a sandwich, that she allows his input.

“How do you feel?” He knows it’s because she’s eaten. He’s going to have to keep an extra eye on her, now. He loves it- her eyes flash at him from across the wood tabletop. She’s wiped off her lipstick and pulled her hair up into a loose, falling ponytail. 

“I feel incredible,” he whispers. He’s blushing, and Katie is giving him this close-mouthed smile that makes him want to shoot himself in the eye, so he looks down before she can see that he’s started crying- but she knows he is, because he’s looking down in the first place. “I love you.”

She’s shirtless, and he’ll never get used to how her tattoos frame her muscles and make her skin even softer-looking- the delicate chain she wears the mood ring he engaged her with on is swinging between her little tits. When he looks up, vision warping with tears, her deep-set eyes are squinting with another quiet smile. He isn’t quite sure what he’s done that’s so good that makes him deserve this.

 

Katie stops smoking immediately, and that’s when he realizes that she hadn’t gone to the doctor until the very day she told him. It makes him feel better, gives him reassurance he didn’t need about how much she trusts him. It drives her absolutely insane, however, and he has to field many petty arguments she becomes desperate to start.

“Can you fucking- Brian! Holy God,” she curses from the bathroom, and he’s in there beside her before she can say another word. “You fucking bitch.”

He could say that she’s taking the Lord’s name in vain, he could help her pull her socks off and kiss her on the head, walk back to the bedroom and ignore her. But instead he says he’s sorry and sits on the counter so that she can kiss him with more teeth than she’s ever had. She releases him with a pat on the dick, goes back to drawing on her lipstick in the mirror. He likes to watch her blink. She pukes two minutes later, and he sits with her on the floor because she yells at him not to.

She cries, too, heavy and gross onto his sweatshirt. She snorts and sobs, hiccups loudly, and Brian grimaces through the snot and hand slapping on the cold tile floor. 

“God dammit,” she groans. He calls her in to work. She drinks hot water naked in bed, and he watches Netflix quietly beside her. At some point, she finds his hand and places it on her head, and he obediently scratches her scalp, runs his fingers through her curls. 

“Katyushka,” he whispers. She grumbles, turns over, licks his stomach. He still hasn’t touched her belly, for fear of getting snapped at. But she scoots over to him, and he takes it as an offering. Both of his hands to her soft tummy, both of his eyes watering on impact. 

It feels like nothing. But she breaks out into goosebumps, and he thumbs over her belly button and below. She lies on top of him, her head on his chest, and he holds her stomach there. She lies still until she tells him that she wants peaches and cream for lunch.

She continues to jibe at him as he makes the damn food for her, sticking her fingers into the cream and sucking it off, sitting cross-legged on the stool he pulls up to the counter for her and jiggling her foot again. He gives her lemonade with a straw, and she sucks on that until he’s done making her a big bowl. She eats as he makes his own, regular lunch, humming along with something terrible. He settles down to watch Antiques Roadshow in the living room as she does yoga beside him, on the floor. 

 

She starts falling asleep earlier, and due to this she often goes to read in bed, her usual routine, immediately after they eat dinner. Brian sometimes joins her, because she tends to mumble reactions to what’s happening on the page as she reads, and sometimes she asks him to come in anyways to keep her company, or to rub her feet. 

Tonight, two months pregnant, she stretches out her legs so that one of them is set atop Brian’s calf, her little pajama shorts slipping down her waist. She monologues in Russian for a few minutes, looking Brian in the eyes, and sniffs loudly, scratches her nose and curls up into a ball before crawling over to him.

She captures his lips in a wet kiss, nearly unhinging her jaw to eat him up. She presses her hands down on his hips, sitting him into the mattress. Her hands come up to his face, smack his cheeks lovingly, and then she’s flying off him, to the CD player on the floor, gathering dust in the corner. She clicks play on Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, and Brian’s mind thumps along with Lazarus, Katie’s hands on his dick and gripping his heart.

He traces the tattoos on her back, the Cyrillic names of her mother and sisters on her shoulders and the birds and cows along her spine as she sucks him down. He fucks her and comes inside of her, like they did so dirty two months ago, and she drips him out of her onto his stomach as she climbs back up to kiss him. He makes her come with her mouth wide open, the muscles of her stomach clenching and fluttering. He watches them the entire time.

“I dreamt about us last night,” she says into his armpit. They’re lying outside on the back patio, Katie cuddled up to him despite the heat. “Do you want to hear?”

He nods, realizing she can’t see him, grunts out a cracked _yes_. She pinches his nipple. 

“I dreamt we were in Rossiya… in my parent’s house, Masha was there, and my Mama, and I was so fat with the baby… You were running around… Mama wanted you to help with dinner…” She trails off, and he runs his hand across her white t-shirt. 

“It sounds nice,” he says. It does. Her parent’s house in Russia is out far in the countryside, her babushka’s old farm-turned-retirement-paradise. Katie was the last daughter born, and the first daughter to turn her mother’s hair grey. Brian gets it. Katie points out his greys almost every single day with a snort. Her younger brother is an angel on Earth. The first son, Viktor is quiet as a mouse.

Katie twists her wedding ring around her finger, clockwise-counterclockwise, round and round. Brian watches her do it, watches her thumb brush lovingly across the bottom of the silver band, her fingers tap over the diamond. She kisses him on his ring finger, over his band, every morning. She is ridiculous, for how rugged she sometimes looks, refusing to brush her hair or wash her face with anything but water. She uses Nivea body lotion to moisturize her face.

“I feel… important,” she tells him. He quirks a brow, and her fingers inch closer to his dick. “Like I’m carrying a heavy load. Something for the President-” she points her finger right at his nose.

“I’m the President?” He asks. She giggles, unzips his fly. 

“You’re the President of my pussy and ass,” she replies. He absolutely despises how it makes his dick twitch in tandem with her scraping the edge of his boxers. “Oh baby.”

She licks over his dick, kisses his balls, runs her fingernails down his thighs with no remorse.

It doesn’t look like anything. Their baby is moving right along with no trouble, Katie’s doctor had insisted, and Brian had believed her- but Katie doesn’t look any different, except for the physical symptoms that cause her to pull on her hair and wake up in the middle of the night. She’s naturally sensitive about physical discomfort, so Brian spends a lot of time ignoring the constant complaining. He figures if he gets used to it now, it won’t be so bad when she gets further along.

Her stomach is flatter than ever, despite her saying that she can certainly see and feel a difference. Brian is sure that her tattoos help camouflage any visible changes she can feel. The cheeky beet illustrated very Victorian-esque on her stomach, with the matching carrot, and the line art of Laura Palmer’s hands move the same way they ever have with Katie on top of him, but he doesn’t bother tracing them anymore. He would much rather put his entire face on them, breathe in and whisper. He hopes that they’re having a girl.


	2. два

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> they're straight but they're queer. one tiny flashback scene in here, shown in italics ;) warning for discussions of addiction/drug use, religion, and shitty parenting (nothing too explicit).
> 
>  
> 
> [the playlist has been updated with more songs! :)](https://open.spotify.com/user/ellen.eng/playlist/6lbFdzWHp0GSW40xU4IJmd?si=SpftSIpgR1a-qiySov_jbw)

Brian wishes that Katie would tell her parents- it’s hypocritical, because he hasn’t told his own mother yet, but he does wish that she would. She has a much better relationship with her parents than he has with his Mom. By the end of her first trimester, when Katie’s doctor tells her that it’s a good time to tell family and friends she’s expecting, Brian is becoming concerned wondering if she’ll ever tell anyone. 

She’s fiercely private, usually. She hasn’t always been this way, he’s learned through intense discussions with her parents over a private Skype line. She used to tell everyone everything- openly spewing her guts at every opportunity. Her mother insisted that she would much rather deal with that possible discomfort and awkwardness of knowing absolutely everything about Katie’s life than nothing. Brian understands the feeling. 

The beginning of her pregnancy had been so rocky, so concerning, that Brian doesn’t want to have to face the idea that Katie may be lying to him about everything. He doesn’t really think she is- doesn’t think that the way she openly worships him in bed to be indicative of her not wanting him to know about her life, but he knows she has a tendency to work herself up into becoming untruthful. He doesn’t blame her for it- he just wants her to know that there’s no need. 

He can’t imagine divorcing her, even if they have only known each other for two years. Two years is nothing, but the expanse of Katie’s soul is everything. 

He finally brings it up over dinner, which tonight consists of pickles, soup, and Saltine crackers. He’s happy that she’s begun lusting after entire meals, and ones he can make no problem, too. She has her hair wrapped up in a red scarf, one that matches that romper he first saw her in, red with sugar snap peas printed on. Her lipstick is purple, and her eyes are half-closed as she sips on a spoonful of borscht. Her nails are bare, and she’s wearing a long, grey longsleeve dress, complete with turtleneck.

“Do you want to call your Mama?” He asks. Katie opens her eyes, her shiny eyelids glowing. She squints at him a little bit, sits up tall.

“I guess so? Do you think I should?” She looks truly clueless, and a little lost and afraid, if he’s honest. His heart sinks, and he reaches across the table for her to place her hand in his. He squeezes her soft fingers, her knuckles dig into his fingertips. “Okay.”

She gets up slowly, and Brian follows her to the kitchen, where her cell phone sits. He doesn’t bother telling her that her parents are likely asleep, in Russia, because he knows that if he does, she’ll lose her nerve. She slowly, as if moving in molasses, lifts her phone to her face, on speaker. 

As it rings, she looks up at Brian with extreme panic. He doesn’t let himself display a single emotion beyond a gentle smile, and her shoulders release some of their tension. He puts an arm around them to calm her further.

“Yekaterina?!” Her mother answers in a half-asleep panic. Katie seems to realize that she’s woken her up and looks immensely guilty, but Brian nods her on.

“Mamochka? I’m here with Brian. Everything is ok,” Katie says. Her voice cracks on Brian’s name. He cups her round shoulder.

“Okay, Katie, what is it? I do not believe you everything is ok. You two usually are good at not calling to wake us. Brian knows better, yes?” Katie swallows loudly in Brian’s ear.

“Yes, I do, hello, sorry to wake you, Mama. We just have some news for you,” Brian prompts Katie. She breathes in fast, says it quickly.

“We are going to have a baby.” 

As Brian had expected, Katie’s mother keeps her on the phone for two hours beyond, and Katie has a tiny smile on her face the entire time, speaking Russian faster than Brian is able to comprehend. 

She’s free of all physical tension afterwards. She sprawls out on top of him on the couch, wiggling her toes, dead weight atop him.

She brings him to a metal concert the next night. He doesn’t bother saying that it’s a Sunday, because she’s picking her outfit for the concert, which begins after ten, at eight am. 

She brings him to church with her every Sunday. She’s made strong relationships with the women there, more than he would have expected her to. She speaks Russian with them and he tries to keep up, and he does grant a lot of his Russian listening practice to come from the Pastor’s words. It’s funny, how little he understands of the Bible, and how intently Katie seems to listen to the sermons. They have to dress up, and Katie always wears long sleeves and long pants or dresses to cover her tattoos. She thinks that it’s a small price to pay. He knows that it makes her feel at home.

She closes her eyes tightly when praying, he’s watched her. She seems to have her own religion completely, something between full-on militant atheism and Russian Orthodox Christianity. The only time she seems to really think about God is at church, or on Christmas day. 

They stay after church for the lunch every Sunday. She eats and gabs with the ladies, and Brian sits with their husbands one table over. He likes them, but he often finds himself looking over to Katie, eating pastries and allowing her hair to fall out of the scarf she has artfully wrapped around the back of her head. 

She does her makeup after dinner, swipes on cheap drugstore black lipstick, and performs magic to make it look perfect. 

The pentagram tattoo on her right shoulder earns some glitter, and her cutoff sleeves are all the way down both her sides. He picks her up, spins her around in a circle, and allows her to choose what he wears. She bought him a pair of black Dr. Martens boots just for this purpose, and they’ve only been worn once, the day Katie insisted that he must break them in. 

She does the usual at the show- screaming into his ear, dancing and gripping his arms too tight. She releases herself to music in a way that would be impossible were she insecure at all- he takes a picture of her in the parking lot afterwards, smeared makeup and a pissed off half-wink, arms crossed and ass propped on the car. Immediately afterwards she had snapped at him to hop in and drive.

She hangs her head out the window, sticks her hand as far as it’ll go, her arm in the wind. Her hyperextended elbow hangs over the door, and he tries to ignore how anxious it makes him, before reaching over to take her bicep in hand and pull her arm inside.

“Come on,” she whispers, with little resistance.

“I’m scared it’s gonna get cut off!” He says. His ears are plugged from the show, despite wearing earplugs. “Katie.”

She sighs, pulls her head inside also, and puts her hand on his upper thigh. 

“My arm isn’t going to get cut off.” She squeezes his thigh. “Like, I promise, Brian.”

He laughs, speeds up to merge onto the highway. She runs fingers over his dick the rest of the car ride. 

 

Monday night, she puts her hands all over him and sends him off to the bathroom- he dutifully cleans himself from top to bottom, inside and out. She makes his vision blur, a lot. The first time he held her in his arms at an airport, he had nearly fallen from how dizzy the smell of her hair made him.

He thinks about her temples as he showers, how they sometimes drip with sweat along a squiggly vein there. Her hair, tangled and piled atop her head, he thinks about how she braids it every night before bed. She knocks on the bathroom door as he’s finishing up.

“Baby? I’m so horny,” she says. He groans, wipes his face, turns the doorknob open to her. Her cheeks are flushed in the triangle beside her nose, and her chin wobbles with laughter. “Oh my god.”

She looks up and down his naked body, wraps her arms tightly around him and sobs neurotically. He strokes up and down, over the goosebumps on her back, and her fingers go to dig into his ass cheeks. 

“Okay,” he says. Sometimes he feels across the tattoos on her skin, having memorized where they rest, and traces over them blindly. He slips one finger over the two hearts at the dimples above her ass, and she shivers in return.

“I wanna be in you… yesterday,” she grumbles into his bare chest. When she pulls back there is an ugly smear of purple lipstick where she was speaking. It’s down her chin, too. Her bangs are sticking straight up. Her tendency to walk around shirtless has his dick hard already, because her tits always, he imagines even or especially when eventually sagging with age, get him sprung. “Come on.”

The wrinkles on the sides of her mouth deepen with a shit-eating grin, she throws her head back so that he leans down to kiss her on the messy lips. 

“I think about how, when we have baby… I won’t get fucked as much,” she says. “I wanna get fucked now. I mean. I’m fucking you.”

He laughs, taps the back of her thighs so she hops up into his arms. He carries her to bed, arms straining despite how light she truly is. 

“Let me eat your ass now. Spread out,” she says. His spine tingles sharply, and he follows instruction, spreads himself on his front on the bed. The sheets feel cool on his stomach, and irritate his nipples. She spanks him once, and a kind of half-growl comes unbidden from his throat. She laughs at him, and begins massaging his ass- honest fingers gripping him.

“Katie,” he sighs, and he can feel her smile on his shoulder. “Katenka.”

She whines with her fingers inching to the tops of his thighs. She pulls on the hair there, coaxing horrible sounds out of him. He doesn’t know when she covered her fingers in lube, but they’re making circles on his hole so that he shivers down to his toes. She hums in an almost motherly way, and his dick aches between his hips and the bed. 

She puts her lips on him, kisses his ass like she kisses his mouth, jaw wide open, tongue everywhere. He hisses, his eyes flutter shut. His thighs feel invisible.

“God, I could never fuck anyone else. Go-od,” she sobs, fingers sliding inside of him. He breathes, she fucks him slowly. “If I ever cheat on your ass, know I am not right. Send me to the fucking hospital.”

He chuckles into the pillow, and her fingers come out of him, she stands, and seconds later he’s feeling her silicone dick rubbing between his cheeks. It makes him harder, makes his dick twitch so much that he turns on his side.

“No, no, no, lie back down,” she says, hands on his back. He obeys, and he knows from her voice that she’s so turned on that she’s falling apart, her fingers shaking on his waist. “Brian.”

He reaches back to take her hand, and she pushes inside of him, babbling Russian the entire time. Full paragraphs of curse words. Fucking him always makes her crazy, no matter how often she puts her dick inside him. She’s always drooling for him, and she’s so wet once he comes and pulls her around to ride his face that he nearly chokes.

She fucks him slowly, and he lies with his eyes wide open, twisting around every few moments to stare back at her, her sweaty, illustrated shoulders, and her shallow breaths huffing out, making her hair bounce. 

The straps of her harness are digging into her hips more than he thinks they have before- and he suddenly remembers that she has a baby growing inside of her, that her tits that she’s pinching as she does him are heavy and growing, that she’s watching him like she’s never seen him before but she’s fallen in love at first sight. He feels like he’s falling off a cliff, and then he comes, reaching back anxiously to hold her hand.

 

_“Boris. When Katie went to rehab, the first time, we had her move to a different apartment- we wanted her to have a fresh start, and not worry about who knew where she lived. I made sure she kept it clean. We just want you to make sure, make sure she is okay. Because she is so far away,” Mama was rubbing her cheek over and over again. Brian doesn’t dare call her anything but Mama in his head. He nodded numbly._

_“I will. I am, she’s staying with me and working, she’s been writing a lot. It’s been really calm, and really nice.” His mind flashed guiltily to when Katie had choked him in bed the night before, and when she had spilled coffee grounds all over the kitchen floor just to get a rise out of him. He doesn’t think that any of that counts as concerning. He’s also ambivalent about Mama’s parenting skills. She nodded, sipped her mug of tea._

_“Thank you, Boris. I will call you next week, same time? You call me if emergency. You call me_ first _,” she said, squinting at him suspiciously over the line. He nodded, and she told him she loved him before hanging up. He was lucky that his sarcastic_ Oh, call you even before an ambulance? Evil, _didn’t spill over from the fevered back of his head until he was alone._

_Katie came in the door fifteen minutes later with groceries and cried about how she couldn’t get her card to work in the machine._

 

Katie’s tummy pops and Brian cannot stop touching her. He knows it drives her insane, but seeing the tiniest bump on the smallest woman he’s ever known makes him ache all over. He thinks, selfishly, that he is much more excited about the baby than Katie is. 

“This is the hottest you’ve ever been. I am so in love with you.” He says it to her in the shower, when she’s got a hand on his dick. She lets go, glares up at him. His stomach drops, her eyebrows are wet and clumping together. 

“You haven’t seen me in my twenties,” she says dryly. He rolls his eyes, wills his dick to calm down. She finishes shampooing her hair, and dries him down after she’s turned off the water. He had already showered, he was just keeping her company. They move to the bedroom, where the sun is shining through the big window.

“Katie- I wanna tell you- I was being serious,” he says. She scoffs at him, scratches her hip, reaches for her body lotion. He hands it to her begrudgingly, watches her begin to lotion her arms, making all of her skin and tattoos shimmer. “Katie-”

“I’m not insecure. Motherfucker,” she snaps. He raises his eyebrows, grateful she’s turned around and can’t see him. Her back ripples beneath the black tee she’s pulling on, the tattoo of the Siberian brown bear twisting on her spine. 

“I didn’t say you were, you know that.” She turns around, her hair is static from the shirt. “You’re carrying my baby.”

She raises her eyebrows like _so!?_ , and he can’t begrudge her for it. She’s right. It doesn’t mean anything. But it means everything to him, so he kneels in front of her and takes a deep breath in against her tummy. 

“I said. You haven’t seen me in my twenties. I had less wrinkles, then,” she says. But she puts her hands on his buzzed head, rubbing over his scalp. She hums, little affirmative noises as he rubs his nose across her belly button. 

“And you were on drugs,” he supplies. She stretches her back, pushes her stomach into his cheek. He cups her ass in both hands. Her fingers go to his ears, tug on his earlobes, the pressure of a little pinch. 

“Who says you haven’t seen me on drugs, though?” She grumbles, flicks his earlobe with a dull nail. He mumbles an _ouch_ and smacks her ass a little bit. “I want to go out for lunch. I want McDonalds.”

He nods against the soft material of her t-shirt, pulls her in tight and then releases her, straightens to his full height- much taller than her, he has to bend down to rub her tummy one more time. She takes his hand off of her, not unkindly, and links their fingers together for a brief moment. She lets go to pull on underwear and shorts, the soupy Boston summer air causing her forehead to bead with sweat already, in the air conditioned house. He’s glad she’ll reach the end of her pregnancy in the winter.

“Hey- Brian? Do you think,” she pauses, bends to pick up her tiny backpack. Her thighs bulge, the snake around her left leg twisting. “Do you think I’ll be a hot mom? Or a crazy mom.” She stares up at him through her bangs, digging her lipstick out of her backpack blindly.

“Who says you can’t be both?”


	3. три

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Katie interrupts her with a laugh that rings in Brian’s ears. She releases the knife, reaches for her apple cider that’s sitting beside the sink. Masha’s eyes flash, and she reaches her hand out, and before Brian’s brain can catch up to his eyes she’s digging her fingernails into Katie’s wrist, so that Katie scowls and pulls her hand back as quickly as she can, knocking the glass of apple cider off of the counter and onto the floor. It spills over Brian’s shoes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is definitely not a reflection on Russians, or immigrant families, but is rather a dramatized portrait of my own Swedish-American family and how we fight, and an analysis of how one must be evil in order to be obscenely wealthy. warnings for family fights/threats of violence, references to drugs, and original characters. i've had this sitting in my docs finished for too long, started looking at it too hard. so take it!
> 
> thanks 2 gillian flynn and shoutout 2 my mom LOL
> 
> [fic playlist (updated!)](https://open.spotify.com/user/ellen.eng/playlist/6lbFdzWHp0GSW40xU4IJmd?si=IYnIRQdxR0SY_stuDwGUrw)

Brian hosts a dinner party as celebration when Katie reaches six months. Shea is back from Germany, where she’s been staying with her on-again, off-again girlfriend (currently off again, prompting her return home), and Katie’s sister is flying in from Miami, where she’s doing some kind of philanthropic work. Brian doesn’t give a shit about the logistics, because he’s eighty percent certain that what she’s mostly doing is wearing ball gowns and snorting coke in bathrooms. 

Bob is back from a business trip, and Ginger and Violet are staying with Pearl for a couple of weeks. So Brian plans the gathering on a Saturday night, and sends out text invites. He momentarily regrets deleting Facebook.

He also sends invites to Katie’s other four siblings, in case they want to drop their equivalents of a half-dollar on a private jet to celebrate their sister having a baby. Something tells him they won’t, but he gets a late text from Viktor saying that he’ll be there, if he can get out of classes early. He’s getting his PhD in child psychology, of all things. Brian hopes he can make it, and tells him so. He knows that he is Katie’s favorite.

Katie goes wild trying to get the house clean, doesn’t want to let him do it himself. He knows that part of her anxiety revolves around Masha, how she’ll inevitably tell every sordid little detail about the dirty glasses and the unswept basement to Mama before the night’s even over, and he wishes he could have left out her invitation. Katie’s fingernail splits from scrubbing the faucet in the second bathroom, and he takes her by the elbows to sit her on the couch.

“Will you just pick out something to wear?” He asks. Katie stares him down, affronted. Brian’s phone vibrates in his pocket, and she rolls her eyes, but heaves herself up off the couch and walks to the bedroom. She waddles a little, and he valiantly does not allow that to kick his knees out from where he’s standing.

She’s been aching and whining a lot lately. Her breasts have grown, and they are so sensitive that she doesn’t want Brian to touch them anymore, but for when she’s seconds from coming and needs sharp pain to accompany her. They’re due to learn the gender in two weeks, and Katie has been whispering to her stomach nonstop in anticipation. She whispers whether she’s near Brian or not. He hears her whispering in the shower, and when she’s on her way to work in the early morning. He imagines that she whispers when she is using the restroom at the church, the single moments she gets alone.

She’s working at the church, as she has for the past year- sometimes at the front desk, usually doing whatever else they may need. She’s substituted teaching the kids during sermon hundreds of times, and Brian has waited for her each time in the church hallway, sipping black coffee as she reads the Bible to the children in slow, simple Russian.

She is very patient with them, especially those who speak Russian as a second language. She always has translations available, and she usually bakes cookies for them, the mornings before. She’s been less dutiful about it now that she’s pregnant and sleeping more deeply, but she still sets her alarm for when it’s still dark, and Brian helps shake her awake, too. 

She is doted on by the ladies at church, too. They send food sometimes, big Russian meals that Brian thinks he enjoys more than Katie does. She’s been craving ice cream constantly, and she’s been mixing peanut butter in it too. It’s looked less and less delicious the more she’s done it.

She reads with more emotion, now, he thinks. He thinks that her interactions with the kids have become more soulful, more motherly, now that she imagines and carries her own baby. One of the smallest kids had walked over to her as she read, last meeting, and had settled a stuffed lamb between her Bible and the baby, and Katie had started crying. The kids hadn’t noticed, but Brian, sitting in the corner, had seen the tears track down her cheeks as she continued reciting verses.

He knows all of the Russian children’s hymns by heart now, and his favorite part of any lesson is when Katie leads the songs, singing slowly, enunciating so that the children can understand her words and sing along. She tells him that she believes that singing is the best way to connect to God, that by singing, breathing, your heart beating with others, you see God in them. Brian is inclined to agree, because the way her throat looks when she sings softly makes his entire body turn to flames.

 

Viktor has texted him that he’s flown in, and will be there by the time the party starts. Brian has never been more grateful for a member of Katie’s family- he needs someone to balance out the screaming matches that he’s seen occur between Katie and Masha, even on the best of days. He breathes a sigh of relief, and continues where Katie’s left off in the bathroom, ignoring the crashing sounds coming from the closet.

He had gently suggested that she buy either maternity clothes or alter something a couple sizes up, and he’d driven her to the mall last week to encourage her to shop. She had bought many things, and she had laid all of them out by what needed to be done, and had gotten to work on her sewing machine the very same night. 

She isn’t that big- obviously, since she’s so tiny anyways, but at six months, she’s only showing a little. Definitely enough for the world to know she’s pregnant, though, and definitely enough to get her slipping into flowing dresses she’s had since college more often than not. 

She eventually comes out with her hair in two braids, wrapped up with basic black bands, a red lip, and the sparkled orange and green dress she had been altering the other day. She looks cute and silly as usual, slipping in some red acrylic laser cut earrings as she comes over to him, his shirt crinkled from bending over to clean the bathroom floor. She kisses him on the lips, he can feel her red lipstick coming off onto him, and digs her fingers into his love handles.

“You should get dressed too. Everything’s ready,” she says. He pulls on one of her braids gently. She laughs against his mouth and kisses him harder, pushing her tongue past his lips. Her belly brushes against his stomach, and his heart clenches. 

“Okay.” He dresses quickly, wearing a shitty Russian tourist trap t-shirt that looks much cooler when worn in Boston with his nicest blazer over, and his nicest denim shorts. She kisses his cheek and leaves her lips there for long enough that he knows she’s trying to give him an extra accessory. He lets her, doesn’t think to wipe it off.

Ginger, Violet, and Pearl arrive first, all climbing out of Ginger’s van clumsily in front of the house. Brian sometimes wonders what they must look like to the neighbors- all of Katie’s friends in full gowns for every dinner party, and Katie’s family showing up in the most expensive cars just because they can. Brian’s friends are Katie’s friends, but they’re low maintenance, and they usually take the bus when it’s easy.

Their neighborhood is full of hippies-turned-Montessori parents, straight moms that want to be lesbians, white women that get together and drink red wine on Girls Nights. Katie has been invited, but has declined each and every time- she says she gets a bad vibe from them, and Brian doesn’t blame her.

“Darling!” Violet squeals, as Katie opens the door wide to welcome them. “Oh my god, I’m so her godmother,” she whines, hands going immediately to Katie’s stomach. Katie laughs, and looks down at Violet cooing over her with so much joy that Brian’s eyes sting.

“I mean,” Katie giggles. Violet looks up at her, straightens to her full height again, and envelops Katie in a tight hug. Ginger hugs Brian as Violet spins Katie round and round. Brian thinks that Katie and Violet would have been wonderful, had Brian never been in the picture. He’s sure that Violet will be the baby’s godmother, he can visualize Katie bringing their tiny baby wrapped in blankets to her drag shows, pointing at Auntie Violet on stage, lifting a little hand to wave up at her.

As everyone else arrives, Brian becomes further disillusioned with Katie’s siblings- they’re nearly an hour late, and dinner is about to be served. He’s less inclined to be pissed at Viktor, but Masha is another story- she tends to arrive when it’s best for her to, and leave when she’s sick of things.

Viktor finally rings the doorbell, Brian opening it to his disheveled appearance. He has such a look of guilt and sorrow that Brian nearly laughs at him, and pulls him into a hug. He looks out into the lavender summer night as he holds his brother-in-law, scanning the street for Masha’s car, but comes up with nothing. It gives him momentary relief.

“I did not bring a present,” he mumbles into Brian’s chest. Masha is the tallest of them. “I feel bad- my Uber got lost, I’m so sorry. Where is Katya?”

Brian releases him from his grip, knowing that Katie’s family can hardly stay still for a prolonged display of affection. His heart is full with Viktor’s stubborn use of _Katya_ , and he shakes his head.

“Really, it’s fine, man. She isn’t expecting a present- in fact, you’re a surprise, she doesn’t know you’re coming- come on in.” Brian leads him to the living room, and his eye twitches at Katie’s heavy gasp.

“Oh, my baby brother!” She pulls him down to the couch with her, and he narrowly misses the three candles on the side table as he goes down heavy next to her. His blond curls bounce and his crow’s feet that match Katie’s scrunch as she kisses him on the cheek. His freckles seem darker, and Brian is happy for him, that his time in California seems to be doing him good. He’s heard a rumor that he has a long-term boyfriend out there, which is yet to be confirmed.

It’s calming to know that Katie both has experience caring for her baby brother, and that she is so full of joy when she does. She keeps him close to her side for the rest of the night, either holding his hand or making certain he is in her line of sight. She pulls him over to sit on the side of her unoccupied by Brian for dinner.

Katie is a natural host. She is less skilled at planning events, but is very welcoming and effervescent. She draws all of the light of the dining room to herself, absolutely glowing even as she chews loudly and snorts with laughter. Brian wants to eat her up, wants to cancel the rest of the party and wrap her up warm in bed, keep all of her to himself, but more than anything else he wants to watch everyone else react to her. 

And all of it falls apart a little, when the doorbell rings, again, the final time. 

Bob is closest, and he opens the door when Brian gestures at him to do so. Katie is wrapped up in Shea’s arms, speaking German to her lowly. They’re rocking back and forth to the playlist Brian’s put on, and he watches from the other side of the room as the door opens to exactly who he had begun to hope had stayed in Miami.

 

“You fucking bitch. I’ll kill you, I’ll scrape out your eyeballs and send them to Mama in a manila envelope,” Katie is hissing across the kitchen counter. Masha has her tiny, pointed nose upturned, and she sniffs hard. Brian knows some other shit she’s been sniffing. It’s funny to watch her be a hypocrite. Katie grips the handle of one of their steak knives, and Brian crosses over to stand between them, one hand on Katie’s belly and another on her white knuckles.

“You wouldn’t dare. You are _not_ to disrespect your elders- Mamochka told you that, I’m sure, when you were terrorizing her as a teenager. Making her cry every night, her hair falling out. You made her hair fall out, Yekaterina! You caused Mama so much stress that her beautiful hair came out in fucking _chunks_! How could you-”

Katie interrupts her with a laugh that rings in Brian’s ears. She releases the knife, reaches for her apple cider that’s sitting beside the sink. Masha’s eyes flash, and she reaches her hand out, and before Brian’s brain can catch up to his eyes she’s digging her fingernails into Katie’s wrist, so that Katie scowls and pulls her hand back as quickly as she can, knocking the glass of apple cider off of the counter and onto the floor. It spills over Brian’s shoes.

“You are going to be the world’s shittiest Aunt,” Katie snaps. She turns around, hand on her wrist, and waddles to the refrigerator. Her wonky walk to accommodate the little baby is more pronounced, he guesses, because of the stress she’s under and all the food she’s eaten. It’s so sweet he nearly forgets that Masha is behind him, chomping at the bit to snap her sister’s neck. Katie opens the refrigerator to get more cider. 

Brian had done all non-alcoholic drinks for the party, and not in solidarity with Katie, but rather because he had foreseen this. His singular trip to Russia and the fighting that had resulted from him and Katie’s stay had been unbearable. Masha and her sisters being drunk had often been the catalyst. He had spent a lot of time eating to keep his mouth occupied, so as to not be dragged into things, and going on hikes in the woods around the farm. Katie hadn’t minded. He doesn’t know that she even knew he was there, half the time.

“And you are going to be the world’s shittiest Mother.” Masha hisses. Katie whips around, her braids flying after her, mouth gaping. Masha is gone from the kitchen before she can reply, and Katie sniffs haughtily, slams the refrigerator shut, and turns to Brian.

“I am going to cry very hard about this later,” she says, lower lip wobbling dangerously. He takes her hand, follows her dutifully back out into the crowd in the living room. He braces her up with a strong arm around her middle back, fingers reaching to stroke her belly gently as the night continues.

Bob and Viktor are in a serious conversation on the couch when Masha exits the bathroom in all her glory- slamming the door shut behind her, eyes squinting to scan the room. Katie snorts from the corner, where she’s still chatting with Shea, and Brian can see how it affects her sister, that she’s not paying attention where she believes attention is due. Shea reaches to stroke Katie’s belly, ever so gently, her long fingers across sequins lovingly, sparkling in the lamplight. Masha pulls on her long yellow jacket, reaches to open the front door.

She mumbles something, Brian hears _fucking tweaker_ in the thickest accent she has ever dared, and he rolls his eyes as she wrestles her pack of Marlboro Reds from her breast pocket, her white lighter flashing between her fingers.

“Please don’t light that in my house,” he says, before thinking. Her fingers stumble, and her head whips around to him. Her perfectly painted pink lipstick twists down with an ugly frown. Katie is still ignoring her, but Brian can feel Viktor’s eyes on him.

“Really? Are you so sure I can’t?” She looks over to Katie, who is now whispering something into Shea’s ear. Her bangs and flyaways cover her profile, just her little nose peeking through. Shea’s eyeshadow glistens, and she throws her head back to laugh at Katie’s secret. “Because she seems like a bitch that smokes indoors.”

Brian stands to his full height. Masha may be the tallest in the family, but that only makes her 5’9” at most, and Brian relishes in being able to tower over her a bit. She seems to back up slightly as he steps towards her, but he can’t be certain. 

She looks so much like Katie, and that’s where it trips him up. She has the same deep-set eyes, the same blonde hair (except she wrangles it into sleek, perfectly straight lengths, down to her thin waist), the same curve of her lips. Her nose is smaller than Katie’s, sharper, but their eyes are horribly similar bar for the slight twitch of anger that is always residing in Masha’s. Her black turtleneck is smeared with her foundation, and their shared sharp cheekbones look less dignified and more cruel on her.

“I would recommend that you leave.” He says. His voice has dropped to a dangerous level, and he feels crazed, like he could snap her in half, with how angry the horrible look she throws at Katie makes him. He cannot believe she was named after the Virgin Mary.

She rolls her eyes, backs up against the wall.

“You are too close to me.” He stands his ground, refusing to play along. “Your wife- she will never be reformed. She’s crazy, you have not seen her at her absolute worst. I am just looking after you, Brian, because I think you are good- and I love you. You are family now, I am trying to help you out of this. I am not to stand aside, be blamed for the fetal alcohol syndrome.”

She even chews gum like Katie. She seems like a cheap knock-off, despite being ten years older. He has it on authority that Masha was a nerdy, stuck-up rule follower as a kid, and Katie always says that she moved to Florida in her late twenties and attempted to be just as crazy as Katie couldn’t help being back home. She always insists it was for attention, and Brian sees that clear as day, now.

“I’ll ask you again. I think you are putting up a front, and I would like you to leave. I am not interested in you being there when our baby is born, either, so I would suggest that you make other plans for that date. Now- out.”

Brian opens the door for her, shuffles her out with a hand on her back. She goes silently, but turns on the brick front steps and spits before his feet, lights her cigarette. She stares him down until he closes the door on her face, and he peeks through the peephole to watch her stomp the ground once before stalking back to her Range Rover.

 

He comes back inside to Katie sobbing in the kitchen, Violet holding her and stroking her arms. Ginger is sipping from a flask at the counter, and Pearl is dimming the lights a little bit. Brian sits down beside her, puts one hand on her arm gently, in case she may not want to be touched. But she pulls away from Violet and grips his shirt, crumpling it as she pulls him closer to her.

“I’m sorry, I ruined my own party,” she says. Violet whispers _no no no no no_ , stroking her hair, and Shea comes into the kitchen from her conversation with Brian’s old work friends to fill her glass with cider. Katie curls further into him, and he rubs her back. Her back has been aching, she’s said, her breasts are probably straining against her now too-small bra, and she shudders in his lap.

They sit in silence, because none of them know what to say, until Katie does one last long sniff and pulls back from Brian’s grip. She swipes beneath her eyes, getting most of the mascara that’s gone down her cheeks clean, and she makes a wobbly smile. Her shiny eyelids look angelic, and she puts both of her hands on her belly.

“Do we have cake? And ice cream? I hope we have both,” she says. Pearl snorts from where she’s been digging in the refrigerator, and Brian affirms that yes, he can get everyone both in a second.

 

Katie eats dessert with Viktor at her side again, and he takes some time to whisper to her lowly, what Brian hopes to be an apology or an affirmation. Katie’s glowing cheeks perk up after, so he assumes it had been. She holds Brian’s hand under the table, and she has two pieces of chocolate cake before everyone begins to leave. She fidgets with her wedding ring under the table, until he takes note and twists it around for her.

She keeps her other hand on her belly when not eating, and Brian patiently strokes her cheek as she accepts hugs from everyone on their way out. 

“I love you,” Viktor is saying to her, and she wraps her arms around his skinny neck, pulls him in close.

“You know, if you want somewhere to stay next summer, you can stay here. Brian and I have been thinking about it, there’ll just be another one of us here, then. That’s what we didn’t foresee,” Viktor laughs into her ear, their teeth flashing in the low light. He nods, hugs her tightly again. 

Brian feels like he’s done good, in bringing them together. Despite Masha’s episode, he feels that the night was successful. It’s a settled feeling, like maybe he can begin to think about being a father.


	4. четыре

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (That had been a night that he had woken up to hear about, Katie drunk off her ass and wandering around Moscow with her closest friends in a snowstorm. She had messaged him all through the night, but he had been sleeping off his own hangover. She had asked him twelve times what she should get tattooed, in various misspellings, and he had woken up to a blurry picture of a word he didn’t know in Cyrillic cursive below her breast. She had called him upon getting his questioning text, told him _It’s your name, you dumb ass_ and had talked him off in her lowest morning hangover voice. She had told him to slap his own ass hard, and had sobbed when she heard him do so. He hasn’t seen the tattoo in person, yet. It’s been two days.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this flashback chapter is dedicated to [@yekaterina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/yekaterina/works) for cheering me on about the Pussy. this chapter is dedicated to you because you always Get It & make it tender. if you haven’t read [Miserable Souvenirs](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16243691/chapters/37974839) PLEASE do yourself a favor and educate ur brain. the link is right there for you to click.
> 
> all spelling errors in text message conversation throughout are purposeful and curated carefully. addiction is not something to be written lightly- but maybe it is! i won’t pretend to know anything beyond my own experience. that is what i’ve showcased here. let's all try to reclaim our experiences in different ways. mental illness is often silly, it’s okay to laugh about your own. we’re all trying our best.
> 
>  
> 
> [the playlist has been updated… once again.](https://open.spotify.com/user/ellen.eng/playlist/6lbFdzWHp0GSW40xU4IJmd?si=-ege3-U3QcC9NKcPeOA7YQ)

Katie sits curled in his armchair engrossed in the Marx-Engels reader, the bright red book nearly folded in half in her pale hands. It had been one of three of his books she’d seemed to approve of on arrival. Brian sits on the couch nearly beside her, sniffing obnoxiously.

It’s her first visit. It’s strange to see her in his living room, her tattooed legs over the armrest. She’s in her underwear, despite the cold. She looks up at him when he coughs, eyes squinting in mirth, slaps the floppy book closed. The pages are thin like the Bible. Her hair is up in two curly pigtails, and her dark purple lipstick is perfect. It’s a rare occurrence. She seems to always be biting her lips or rubbing her mouth accidentally and smearing it.

“Do you need some Vitamin C?” She asks him. He rolls his eyes, goes back to his video game, but reaches his right hand to grip her ankle and tug. “Oh, you want me to sit on your lap? Not when you have the virus, Brian. I cannot have the virus.”

It’s been her only topic of discussion since she’d arrived. He’d unfortunately achieved the highest honor of his annual winter cold just as Katie was due to visit, and had warned her over text. She had kissed him on the lips at the airport, wrapped up in her long black wool coat and fur hat, but since then she hasn’t touched him. It’s been two whole days of the fourteen she’s staying, and he wants to scream. 

“It’s not that serious, Kate. Look-” He pauses the game, and she giggles as he leans into her, looking up at her on her perch. “Look.”

“Look where? Huh?” She says. He’s close to her lips, but she backs away from him. 

One of the first things she had ever messaged him on Facebook was a nude- she had sent him her tits, squished up against her forearm, long before she had gotten his name tattooed at her heart.

(That had been a night that he had woken up to hear about, Katie drunk off her ass and wandering around Moscow with her closest friends in a snowstorm. She had messaged him all through the night, but he had been sleeping off his own hangover. She had asked him twelve times what she should get tattooed, in various misspellings, and he had woken up to a blurry picture of a word he didn’t know in Cyrillic cursive below her breast. She had called him upon getting his questioning text, told him _It’s your name, you dumb ass_ and had talked him off in her lowest morning hangover voice. She had told him to slap his own ass hard, and had sobbed when she heard him do so. He hasn’t seen the tattoo in person, yet. It’s been two days.)

He had sent back some letters and punctuation he had accidentally bumped when dropping his phone onto his face while lying in bed, and the nicest picture of his hard dick he could manage. It had earned him a paragraph of how badly she wished that she was living in Boston with him. _Less sno9w,_ she had said. Somehow, it had made him harder. 

Katie giggles as he scoots closer to the end of the couch, taking both of her bare, smooth calves in his hands and pulling her onto his lap. She screams into his ear, out of breath and laughing so hard that she goes silent for a second, mouth hanging open. 

“You dick,” she wheezes. He settles her knees on either side of his ass, holds her butt with both hands to keep her steady. 

“What? Please pay attention to me,” he whispers. She’s looking down at him, her layers falling out of her pigtails. The smile lines in her cheeks are deep with mirth. He wants to kiss her, but he can feel a cough tickling his throat. She blinks, her teeth peek from behind her purple lips.

“Pay attention to you. You are a big baby, Brian. I pray for you. Are you really getting hard right now? Come on.” She rolls her eyes, but he can hear her getting out of breath with every word she speaks. Her cheeks are getting a little red, and he digs his fingers into her ass, inching them up to the back seam of her underwear. They’re electric blue, high-waisted, plain otherwise. His mouth is wetting, he swallows and feels his cough go down with it.

“Please kiss me, Katie. I want you. Please show me the tattoo,” he says. She scoffs, but grinds down on his dick a little. He can feel her pussy through the cotton of her underwear. She’s soft, and damp, rubbing and catching on his dick as her hips move. He gasps, and her thumb goes the bottom of his throat, her fingernails scraping his shoulder through his shirt. She presses down, and he coughs a little. He brings his fingers beside his dick to rub across her damp underwear, and she takes a shaky breath in.

“I don’t want to get sick.” Her pussy is hot against him, and she’s growing warmer and wetter as he hardens. “I could show you the tattoo if you wanted, you could come onto it. If you really wanted.” She hums as if it’s no big deal. Her cheeks suck in, her cheekbones becoming sharp and blurring his vision with sweat.

He’s been waiting so long to have her atop him. He’s wanted her to drool on his dick like she kept saying she’d been dreaming of, and he can neither fault her for not nor beg her to do so, now. 

“Katie. Your pussy,” he groans. She laughs, brings her fingers down to meet his. “Can I see you?”

She gasps, and he can feel her clit twitch beneath his fingers. It makes his hands shake, and her eyes roll back. She rubs herself across their hands and his dick, jerking her hips back and forth as if she’s overstimulated already. Her head drops, and he brings his hand to the bottom of her shirt, lifts it and places hot fingers on her stomach. She whines, fidgets, and finally sits up onto her knees, leaving his dick throbbing, missing her heat.

“Oh my god,” she says. She stands on shaky legs, pulls her underwear down. The dark blonde curls she’s trimmed into a heart shape around her pussy are wet at the ends, and she reaches, as she kneels back down over his lap, to spread her lips apart with two red fingers. He can hear her and smell her, she’s a bright reddish pink, glistening with wetness. His thumbs go to take the place of her fingers, to pull her apart and look. Her thighs shake, the vine up over her hip twitching. “Please.”

“I’m gonna look at you,” Brian says, still staring. She grabs onto his shoulders desperately. “You can hold yourself up.”

She sighs heavily onto his face. Her breath smells like the mint gum she’s always chomping next to his ear. 

“Please lay me down. Please lay me down, Brian. Please lay me down,” she says. He releases her lips, sucks on his fingers to taste her, salty sweet. It causes her to fall down onto his thighs.

He lays her down. She throws her head back dramatically over the armrest of the couch, her neck bent back at such an angle that he can see the pattern of her trachea. 

“Bri-aann,” she croaks. He laughs at her, but it’s through intense arousal that’s causing him to sweat out of his every pore, so the length of it is cut off pathetically.

“Yeah?” He asks her. She lifts her head, shoulders twisting with muscle. 

“Fuck me outside.”

He makes to lean into her wet pussy but she has hands coming up to hold his forehead away from her. His tongue makes its way out from behind his teeth. It’s embarrassing. And then his brain catches up with his body. It’s the dead of winter, and the balcony of his apartment is covered in snow.

“Wait, what? Katie-” She lowers a hand to his mouth, presses her pointer finger to his lips. She swipes up some of his drool. His eyes flicker down to her pelvis beneath him, and her face lights up with laughter as he does so. “What? I want to get on with it. I gotta taste you.” His voice is grumbling from somewhere deep and previously unknown inside of him.

“I meant it. Take me outside,” she laughs. Her green eyes are twinkling, shining brightly beneath her dark blonde brows. They’re bushy, she’s been growing them out _just to see_. He loves them.

“The neighbors,” he says. She huffs upwards so her bangs bounce up off her shiny forehead. She shrugs, her hands releasing his head. “What?”

“Get on with it then, if you don’t want it.” Katie bites her bottom lip and sucks her cheeks in. “You bully.”

“I promise. In the summer,” Brian says. “Whenever you want. Wherever.” 

She laughs, takes his ears in her hands, mashes his nose to her clit. He immediately sucks up her wetness, the loud sound his lips make against her silky hole making his hips twitch into the couch. She sighs and keeps laughing joyfully. Her hip bones are sharp, sticking out and pressing into his forearms. She has a slight V at them; the curve of her ass is brought forwards to make her hips seem wider.

Her legs shake as he gently penetrates her with his tongue. She tastes salty and just how he’d imagined her to taste, in his deepest dreams or in their early morning phone calls. He cannot help but allow her to drip into his mouth, pool on his tongue. He sucks on her and licks over her clit four long times before she comes with her heels smacking against his ass.

 

 

Katie goes out with Violet on a night he works late. Violet promises to take her out on the town, get her drinks and the best food she can find, give her a truly shitty American nightlife experience before bringing her to her Saturday night show. She promises to get Katie gussied up in the “Best Drag She Can Bother With On A Cis Lady,” and Katie has been chattering about it all week. She’s so excited that Brian almost feels slighted, but he’s mostly happy to get her consistently intense emotions directed at someone who will be able to respond with fresh energy. He doesn’t think he’s always fair to her, in that respect.

She’s going full-speed ahead when his alarm rings in the afternoon for him to get ready to go in to the office. He’s working ordering for a department store currently- a shit job, but a better-paying one than his last. He’d been a waiter for three years previously, and he’s happy to be done with it. Anything else seems luxurious. Even if he wasn’t able to get the full two weeks off for Katie.

“Brian. I love your nose, I love your eyebrows.” He raises them as he finishes his scrambled eggs, rubbing a finger across the right one. “I’m serious! I love your entire face.”

She’s sitting on the counter in just her undies. She’s got her hair in pigtails again; holding a red mug of coffee in her pale hands.

“I love your nipples, and your shoulders, I love your dick so, so much,” she goes on. He nearly chokes on his own coffee. She’d given him the pink mug. Her ears are bright red. He can’t tell if she’s hot or cold, because her face seems sweaty but her thighs are textured with goosebumps. “I love your feet, too.”

He scoffs into his fork. She rolls her eyes. 

“Does that feel good, then? Not accepting my nice compliments? I say you are sexy, you brush me off. Brian. You make me crazy. Stupid boy, can’t trust men…” She trails off and begins muttering to herself in Russian. Brian can feel the laughter bubbling up within himself as he stands, crosses the kitchen to soak his plate in the sink. He puts his hands on her thighs, they are cold to the touch.

“You make me feel good. I’m glad you like me, Katie.” She grins at him, finally making eye contact. Her pupils dilate as she scans his face. “I like you too. I love everything about you.” She blushes comically, the red starting in little circles at her cheeks and spreading down to her neck.

He leaves with her blasting Nick Cave in the living room, drawing on her lipstick, completely unable to sit still. She croons along to his deep _Tell me I’m dirty…_ with both of her hands tangled in her hair.

He works his shift with his phone in his backpack in his desk, doesn’t even think about it until he’s climbing into his car in the parking lot and unlocking his phone to three missed calls and voicemails from Katie and fifteen missed calls from Violet.

He doesn’t dare read Violet’s previous texts, wants to be able to drive steadily despite how his heart has grown heavy and sticky, falling down down down into his stomach, rolling in acid and the peanut butter and jelly sandwich he’d eaten for dinner. So he only bothers with the very most recent one, sent ten minutes ago.

_We’re at your place_

He throws his phone to the passenger seat and drives as fast as he dares home. It’s three a.m., and he hopes that Katie is okay. There are millions of possible narratives playing out in his mind, and he nearly misses the turn onto his block.

He runs up the stairs to his apartment haphazardly, feeling like he’s a thousand pounds heavier on his left side, hanging onto the railing with all of his strength. He thinks he hears something falling out of his backpack, but doesn’t bother turning around to see. He unlocks his door with shaking hands, it slams open against the adjacent wall. His hands before him are pale and vibrating.

“Vi?” He calls. She’s in front of him, then, holding an elegant finger to her red lips to quiet him. The same finger is repurposed to beckon him to follow her.

She’s still in full drag- which, tonight, is something she is hardly able to sit down in. Her corset is shimmering with jewels in the low light of the front hall. She blinks and her lashes flap heavy over her shining eyes. Her heels clack on the wood floor as she guides him to his own bedroom.

Katie is on the bed, eyes half-closed. She’s blacked out, and he doesn’t consider how he knocks Violet off-balance to reach her. Her makeup looks as if it’s been touched up by Violet, when she had come by to pick Katie up for the night. Her eyelids are covered in pink glitter, and her cat-eye wings are slightly smeared but large and sweeping.

“Katie,” he whispers. Her eyelashes flutter, and she giggles under her breath. “Katie.”

“Brian… my baby.” Her words are agonizingly slow, as if she’s desperate not to slur them. “Mmm, sweet baby.”

He brushes her ringlets out of her eyes, swipes the pad of his thumb across her cheekbone. She’s asleep in minutes, with his fingers on her brows slowly moving from side-to-side. His heart is slowing down it’s frenetic beating. He had expected much worse. He’s happy that everyone is home.

He finds Violet in his pink bathrobe scrubbing the toilet once he thinks he’s in the clear to leave Katie asleep. She sighs up at him, straightens to sit beside him on the bathroom counter.

“She’s got a problem, man. Did you know that she had a problem?” Violet asks. She sounds exhausted, as if she’s had her work cut out for her tonight, and Brian finally feels the intense rush of guilt for her that he’s been holding back as he waited for Katie to fall asleep.

“Not with drinking,” he says. It seems dirty to talk about her like this. It _is_ dirty to talk about her like this. He’s preserving her dignity as much as he can in this instance, figures every human being must be morally grey. He wants to be good to her. He likes to think that he is. Violet seems to read his mind, and she sighs again. “I’ll talk to her tomorrow.”

He looks at her. She’s taken her hair down, and it’s comforting to see her calm eyes. She looks completely open, not a hint of resentment. He hasn’t known her to ever really have it- she’s very patient when she loves you, and he guesses that she loves Katie very much already. He can’t blame her, and he even feels proud, that Violet thinks that he picked a good one.

“She’s so pretty,” Violet whispers. Katie begins to snore softly in his bed. “And very sweet. And smart as a whip.” He nods. “I’d love to hang out with her again in a sober setting. She said to me that she was worried about being here, afraid you don’t love her. But that was at her high point. She’ll be okay.”

She’s looking at him like she can see right through him- she can. He feels guilty, but knows that it’s Katie’s own brain doing the hard work for the both of them. She’ll find a way to take her own responsibility. 

“She’s just different like that. You know,” Brian says. Violet nods, and then laughs softly. He knows that Katie won’t wake up, but he appreciates her sensitivity. “She’ll own up to it. She always does.”

“Reliable lady,” Violet says. He nods.

They calm down in the kitchen with some tea and quiet, and Violet curls up on the couch with some blankets from the closet once they’re no longer so wired. Brian slides into bed with Katie, whose face is blank and serene as a baby’s. She looks very young, even despite the makeup, and he wishes she would take her time. And he holds her big-spoon style all night long. Her hair smells like beer, but the back of her neck smells like her sweat and perfume. He kisses the tattoo of the twisted-up cobra hidden there ten times before he drifts off. 

 

 

Katie screams along to some Russian metal band as she cooks him breakfast the day she is due to leave- she is a good cook, though she apparently hates it. Her hair is in her eyes, frizzing out from her temples. She laughs at him when he comes in to wash his hands, takes him up in her wiry arms to spin him around. The music doesn’t match how she dances with him. 

She keeps laughing until she kisses him, just once with her lips pushed out extra soft on his. They eat together, and he walks her right up to the gate. It physically aches to let her go.

When she leaves, he misses her badly. 

She calls him right when she lands, three a.m. Moscow time, voice gruff over the phone. She tells him to go to sleep, because she knows he’d been staying up for her the entire day. She promises that she’s safe, and that she’ll text once she’s home. He keeps himself up with one more half cup of coffee to make certain she makes it. He doesn’t respond to her text to make it seem like he’d fallen asleep already.

After having her right beside him, the ache of not being near her is infinitely more pronounced. He wants a fairytale ending, but knows that fairytales have their share of blood and gore. He imagines Katie as Baba Yaga, texts her and gets a screeching phone call back in which she confirms that yes, it is She. The call cheers him up, but he cries himself to sleep anyways.

It feels like Katie is living inside of him. When she calls him asking if he can send her a selfie where he thinks he looks ugly he understands what she needs. He requests that she do the same. He zooms in on three of her pimples and the tiny scar on her chin. She has a little blonde hair growing from the tip of her sharp nose. He almost counts her every visible pore, but is distracted by her calling him again to tell him how sexy she thinks his nose hairs are.

“Brian,” she says down the line. He nods and gives her a noise of affirmation. He knows that she’s drunk, but won’t comment on it until she does something really stupid. He’s letting her be. Her accent is rolling and thick, he can almost hear her breath turning to ice in the wind. She’s outside, and he hopes she’s just having a cigarette and not wandering.

“I want to, like. Come back to Boston!” She exclaims it, like it’s surprising her. He can imagine her, her blonde curls framing her red lips and her black fur hat. He can hear her smoking and thinks he can hear the faint click of her silver cigarette case. She had messaged him when she had bought it, because it has an etching of Baba Yaga on it. “I want to stay there. My sister’s too evil.” 

He sits on his futon patiently, rubbing his knee. She sounds like she wants to say more.

“In Moskva, I don’t have anything to do here. I have these ladies, you know, the girls.” He knows the girls. He doesn’t like the girls. Katie has paid for each of their breast implants, very graciously. They haven’t done much in thanks. He guesses that she’s out with the girls right now. “And get drunk.”

He doesn’t comment. She sighs heavily. The wind rushes up against the receiver and Katie sniffs. He thinks her nose must be red from the cold.

“Everyone is cock in Moskva.”

He laughs, but it’s a huff that he knows will make her sadder. She groans impatiently.

“Say something, Brian. Tell me I can live with you.” She’s pushy when drunk, apparently another reason why Violet had taken her home quickly. She’s a Taurus when sober and worse when otherwise. “Brian.”

“You can.” He’s being honest. “I want you to come live with me more than anything. But I want you to really want me.”

She laughs and it sounds derisive. He rubs his hand over the back of his head. His hair has been growing in more than usual, and it’s making him insecure. He feels like since Katie is older than him she’s settling. He isn’t cute enough for her. He could have a bigger ass, he thinks.

“I’ve never been in love before. And then you took me to McDonalds and I got the strawberry shake. And now I am in love with you.” She sounds older than he’s ever heard her. It flips a switch in his brain. It makes him think about how her pussy dripped all down his face.

She had ground down on his chin one lazy morning, holding both of his hands and pinning him down to the couch. Her moans had been nearly over-exaggerated, and her toes had brushed against his arms again and again. 

He scratches his arm over the denim shirt Katie hates. His heart is pounding as if he’s run a marathon; he thinks he sees a shadow out of the corner of his eye and turns, but notices nothing there.

“Katenka, I.” His voice breaks. He grins and bursts out laughing, suddenly overcome with her. She laughs in tandem with him, a million miles away. “I love you. I love you too.”

“I wish you would call me that in bed,” she says. He snorts. “Did you Google that? Russian nicknames?”

“Yeah. I’ll call you whatever you want, you just have to ask,” he says. He can hear her smile. “You can come here whenever you want. You’ll always be welcome to live with me.”


	5. пять

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "...I’ve never been so happy in all my life,” she says. “It’s very confusing.”
> 
> He laughs loudly, and she does too, bursting into it in a relieved way. She falls back onto the pillows with a sigh, her hair spreading in all directions around her, a halo of honey blonde. She puts both of her hands on her stomach, and Brian scratches lightly over the turnips and carrots beside her thumbs. Her nipples harden immediately beneath her shirt, but he shakes his head when she looks at him longingly. Instead, she sleeps with her head on his chest, drooling heavily. He combs her hair with his fingers to lull her into dreamland.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello we are back again! I am fresh off finals and loving miss katie. I even give her a cat in this, that's how much i love her. thank you all for reading! this one gets a little intense, but then, all of them have been so far! 
> 
> the cat is named Margarita after one of katya's favorite books and coincidentally one of mine too! read the master and margarita for a good time. special thanks as always to @yekaterina for supporting me and encouraging me like i really can't thank you enough, ever
> 
> #mentalillness

Katie starts becoming argumentative with him once her belly begins growing exponentially.

He had known she would. It was bound to happen, that she would ride the wave of her own moods to reach the point where she was tired of it all. He’s anticipated it, and it helps him to prepare a little better when the time does come. All of her threats are empty, anyways, he can see it in her eyes even when he can’t. It’s comforting to know for certain that they will be okay in the end.

She looks gorgeous (in a way that he almost hates noticing) when she’s yelling at him red-faced with the baby in between them in the kitchen. Tonight, she’s been going on about how he’s left his shoes in the way of the front door since three pm. It is now seven, and it’s boiled over into accusations of how she knows he thinks she’s insane.

“Stop lying to me. I know you’re looking at me like _she’s a fucking lunatic!_ I don’t have to be _sheltered_ from what you think. I’m my own _fucking_ woman. Tell me what you think of me. I don’t give a fuck what you think of me!” Katie is slamming her hand down on the countertop as she snaps. It makes a harsh _smack!_ each time she does it.

“Katie,” he says, trying to put even an ounce of warning into his voice. He knows it won’t work, in his heart of hearts he prefers to allow her to let it out. “I don’t think anything about you beyond what I tell you.”

She scoffs, rolls her eyes before storming off to the bedroom. 

He sighs, wipes up the spilled salt beside the sink. 

Hours later, when Katie has exited their bedroom for the first time since she left the kitchen, she curls up beside him beneath the blanket on the couch. He’s watching the news, and her eyes are glazed over with half-sleep. He looks down at her as she breathes slowly beside him. He tests the waters by creeping a hand to her round belly. She hums as his fingers make contact.

“I am really sorry,” she says. He nods, rubs over her stomach. “Boris.”

“Hmm?” He asks. He likes when she calls him the Russian name, knows that it’s her own way of asserting that he is close and familiar.

“Not you, Brian. Baby Boris. After you.” She covers his hand with her own. His heart skips a beat. “Yeah?”

He leans down to kiss her cheek. She has a soft smile that he’s never seen before on her lips. Her fingers trace the veins on the back of his hand and poke at his knuckles. 

“I still think it’ll be a girl,” he says. His voice is quiet, his heart full and overgrown at the thought that Katie would want to name her child after him. It’s already written on her body, at her heart. She smacks his hand.

“Borislava, then. But I _know_ he’s a boy. Get over it.” She grins. “He is inside of me right now, causing a ruckus. He’ll look just like you. With those pretty brown eyes.”

Brian’s stomach swoops upwards. Their heads are resting up against each other, and their bodies are in a perfect heart shape.

“He’ll look like Viktor, probably. He’ll have your bone structure.” Brian curls his fingers into a loose fist, and uncurls them. Katie’s belly is warm beneath her soft black sweater. She laughs and kisses the side of his mouth. He loves her when she is tired out and curls up into him. 

“I love you,” he says. He’s learned to say it when he feels it. It seems like he’s keeping secrets if not. Katie is bright, but the kind of person to internalize the words if he does not say them. She brightens and blinks up at him. Her blonde lashes look soft as silk.

“I spilled the salt, fought with you. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy,” she says. It’s in lieu of what she is really thinking, a confession for a declaration of love. It warms his heart.

“It’s okay. I love you. I accept your apology,” he says. She’s told him a million times that she needs to apologize in order to make amends. He takes it seriously now. She smiles and curls into him, as much as she can with the baby. He holds the both of them closely, tracing the lines of the tattoos on her left arm.

Sometimes she wears her wedding ring on her left hand, but more often on her right. He wears his on his right always. She wears it on her left when she’s going out, when she’ll be with friends and not him, to assert that she is properly Western and legally in love, she says. Otherwise, she wears it on her right hand, as she is now. He wishes she would all of the time, but it’s hardly for him to decide. Anyways, he likes her tendency to slip between two worlds, if she feels the same.

 

Two days later, they’re at the doctor to learn the gender of the baby. Brian is much more anxious than he lets on, not because he thinks that this has any bearing on anyone’s future whatsoever, but more so because he knows that this will be the gateway to all of it becoming a thousand times more real.

Katie brings a batch of cookies for Raja, who has been monitoring her entire pregnancy and has become a fast friend in the same time. Katie likes to rile her up, get her talking so that the appointments seem more like old friends catching up than an analysis of what is soon to be a life-changing event.

Brian loves to watch the two of them, and does so usually silently as they discuss the newest fashion trends and Katie promises to give Raja the recipe for the cookies. Finally, Raja gets down to business, and she has the intense look of someone who truly is all-knowledgeable about her job.

“Yes, okay Katie, how have you been feeling?”

And Katie does what Brian knew she would, shifts slightly in her seat and uncomfortably shrugs. He raises his eyebrows when she looks at him in askance, and she swallows visibly.

“Well, not so much perfect. I have been feeling well physically, well. As normal as one does while being pregnant. But I’ve been having some issues… otherwise. And I have an appointment in a couple days-”

“Therapy?” Raja asks. Katie nods, looking grateful for the inference. “Well I think that’s a smart move. We all need to take time to understand and consider the gigantic adjustment to our lives that is pregnancy and parenthood, and I’d say that you know yourself well and are therefore cognizant of your limits. You should call if you ever need anything or are worried in any way, and visit a therapist as needed. It is what us medical professionals are here for, after all.”

Katie nods gratefully, and takes Brian’s hand as Raja goes in on the ultrasound. Brian goes through the motions; not caring too overly much about the heartbeat, which he has heard before, and watches carefully as Raja scans over their baby inside of Katie. She is so nonchalant that she makes it seem as if it is no big deal. It cushions the blow every time that she delivers news. Brian thinks that she is the best at her job.

“Oh, a boy,” Raja sighs contentedly. Brian’s heart skips a beat and Katie’s hand squeezes his so tightly that he winces and tries to shake her off on reflex.

 

“ _Fuck_ that!” His heart skips a beat at Katie’s shrill scream. She’s in the bathroom, and he hears a sickening thud, a following crash as he falls over his feet to reach her.

The door is swinging open before him, and Katie’s clenched fist is held before her belly- her knuckles are cut, dripping blood onto the floor, and Brian gasps, holds both hands up in surrender before his brain catches up to him.

“Fuck, Katie, what-” she sobs to cut him off. “Katie. Did you hit the mirror? Hey.”

“No, no, I. Let me wash my hand. Brian, please,” she says. Her words are rushed, and Brian shakes his head, takes her biceps with shaking fingers to guide her into the bedroom. “Brian. Stop it, let me go. I swear to god, let me go and clean it up. I’m fine.”

He sighs, takes a deep breath in as he’d learned to do on Yahoo answers and breathes out in one, two, three, four, hands rubbing Katie’s shoulders. He nods, but settles her down on the bed anyways. He’s a happy liar.

“Please sit there, Katie. For me?” He looks her in the eyes. She nods, and allows him then to wipe her knuckles up and bandage her, only finding one piece of glass lodged in her skin. Her rapid breathing slows as he wraps gauze around her hand. She watches him intensely, blinking and silent. He leans her back against the pillows and makes her a smoothie in the kitchen as she rests, ignoring the shaking of his own hands for the moment. Her lips are red and bitten, and her cheeks suddenly seem much more sunken in than they should be.

She drinks the smoothie out of a metal reusable straw he didn’t know they had as he lies beside her and reads. When she becomes present enough to wince at the feeling of her knuckles twisting against the gauze he sets his book down and turns to her, propping his head up on the heel of his palm. 

She smiles at him and pokes his eyebrow. Her white Björk t-shirt has a couple bloodstains on it, and it’s so small on her that it only covers half her belly, now. The barbed wire on her hips is showing at the waistband of her sweatpants, and the line art of Laura Palmer’s hands, now a little faded with pregnancy, is still pointing up, parallel to her belly button. 

“Tell me,” he says. Her eyebrows crease, and she runs a hand across the tarot card on her right tricep. Death- he doesn’t usually hate it, but he does today. “Katie.”

Her eyes cloud, but then clear, and she laughs in a self-deprecating tone. “You know.”

“But I don’t,” he says. She hates him when he gets like this. But he can’t run and hide from her now, not when they’re not just the married-too-quick couple with far too much sexual energy than average straight people. She’s naming their kid after him. It’s far more serious, and they’re getting older every day. He realizes that they probably should have worked out their issues before keeping the baby. There’s no turning back now.

“Okay. Well I’ve punched a mirror before. And I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. Once you punch a mirror once, and see yourself shatter into billion pieces there’s always going to be that voice in your head going _Yekaterina, do it again!_ and Brian, it’s, like, _always_ in Russian, and always sounds just like one of my sisters. It’s not a real voice, I’m making it up. But it’s real in my heart.”

He doesn’t say anything. Her face is pale, as if she’s been noticing the pain to a greater extent. 

“But also. I’ve never been so happy in all my life,” she says. “It’s very confusing.”

He laughs loudly, and she does too, bursting into it in a relieved way. She falls back onto the pillows with a sigh, her hair spreading in all directions around her, a halo of honey blonde. She puts both of her hands on her stomach, and Brian scratches lightly over the turnips and carrots beside her thumbs. Her nipples harden immediately beneath her shirt, but he shakes his head when she looks at him longingly. Instead, she sleeps with her head on his chest, drooling heavily. He combs her hair with his fingers to lull her into dreamland.

 

Brian walks Katie to her first therapy appointment in two years on the day of the first snowfall. He waits in a nearby coffee shop, reading the (depressing) news and chewing on a (disappointing) banana nut muffin. He refills his coffee three times, and pees just before he’s due to pick her up and walk her home. She meets him in the lobby, maybe a little cried out but otherwise glowing. She babbles about what she talked about and what her therapist had to say about it all. He’s just happy that she has someone to chat with that’s far more qualified than he.

“She said I should get a _friend_ ,” Katie says into her green scarf. Her voice is muffled, and Brian delights in how she raises her thick eyebrows as if she is quite partial to the idea. “A furry friend. A critter. I have the paperwork for the thingy in my bag.”

Brian snorts, allows her to hook her hand through his elbow. She cuddles up to him and rests her head against his bicep. They turn at their block to make their way to the grocery store. By the time they are inside and Katie has snatched up a cart, Brian is dutifully listening to her drone on about what sort of creature she would like as a companion. 

“I think a dog would be really nice. But I don’t know, I think it would be too much work, and especially when little Borja is here, I don’t want to have _two_ babies yet, maybe ever. So, I think cat? Because a little bird or something would be funny but I can’t really cuddle with that. A kitty,” she stares up at Brian as she pats her belly softly. 

“I think that would be nice,” he says. “I always had cats as a kid.” She grins widely and waddles over to the rice and beans.

He isn’t quite sure about the idea; however, when she suddenly she becomes very stubborn about finding a hairless therapy cat in the Massachusetts area within the month. It seems like a tall order, but of course in a matter of days she is babbling on the phone with a certain Sasha who apparently has more than enough and is looking for a good home for one of her “ dearest sweethearts.” It is so like Katie to find exactly what she wants when she wants it. She’s too particular for the world to be so fair to her. He’s happy that it is, though. 

The best part is that Sasha is Russian, and has three small children of her own. All of her cats are certified therapy animals. And Katie is engrossed in the situation, texting Sasha at all hours of the day and even picking up knitting at Sasha’s suggestion. It seems to siphon some of that nervous energy from her, and she gifts Brian with a knobby pink scarf that she finished in one day. He wears it to the library the same morning to pick up a few books on Peterbald cats that Katie had called to request.

He drives them far out into the south suburbs to pick up the cat, and Katie is in rare form in the passenger seat. She has a written checklist of items that they’ve picked up at the pet supply store for the animal which she continuously is folding into small squares and triangles. He’s trying to amuse her with stories of his high school experience, telling her about his senior prom for the millionth time. It works, and the ride seems to go by quickly.

As they pull into the driveway of Sasha’s little house; however, Katie grips his forearm tightly, preventing him from climbing out of the car.

“What if she doesn’t like me?” She asks. Her eyes are wide, and her voice is grave. She holds intelligence in her eyes that looks beautiful and especially smart mixed in green.

“What, Sasha? I think you know that she already does, you’ve been talking on the phone for how long,” he says. She shakes her head slowly.

“No, Brian; Margarita. The fucking _cat_ , Brian. What if she hates me?” She seems stricken suddenly, as if this hasn’t crossed her mind until now. He pats her hand in encouragement.

“She’ll love you. Sasha said so, and I’m fairly certain she would know. Now, come on.” He guides her out of the car and shuts the passenger door behind her. As they climb the three stairs to Sasha’s green door, it swings open before them.

“Ah, the babies are here! And the littlest one, too. Oh, you are all three so sweet,” Sasha sweeps them into a hug, her long arms reaching around the two of them without issue. Katie giggles, and Brian shakes Sasha’s hand as she releases them.

“Ah, the father, the namesake! So lovely to meet you. Yekaterina has told me everything about you,” she says. Her lips are painted a bright red, and her bald head looks incredibly elegant with the patterned blue scarf around her neck. She is wearing a long sleeved black sweater dress and green platform clogs. She gestures for them to come inside. Katie grips his hand once Sasha turns her back to them.

Sasha has a pot of tea brewing, and Brian is sure that it is whatever she knows to be the best for pregnancy. It smells sweet and floral, and sure enough, once Katie has a hold on her teacup she is downing it faster than he can take his first sip. Sasha’s home is very minimalist, with an accent red armchair in the living room. Most everything else is white or cream. Brian wonders how the kids get along with that, but then again, if they are Sasha’s children he doubts they are much too messy.

“She should be somewhere around here. Most of the kitties are quite shy, but for Margarita. It’s why I’ve decided that she should get along well in your home. I just know she’ll adore you, Katie. And you as well, of course, Brian.” Brian gets the vibe that he is welcome, but is without a doubt a man, and so is a lesser priority. He can’t begrudge it. Sasha exits with a delicate _pardon me_ to search for the cat.

Katie turns to him, smiling again. He wraps an arm around her shoulders, and traces over the kitty on her wrist. It’s funny how things align with her. He thinks that her fate has always been predetermined, likely because she is on a different spiritual plane than other average mortals. 

Suddenly, the yowl of a cat is in the doorway, and Sasha is muttering lowly in Russian to the little creature. Katie scoots forwards on the couch, and sure enough, as Brian had expected, the cat is slinking to her outstretched hands. She’s gray, with massive blue eyes. Brian recognizes her from all of the photos, but also feels an unconditional love for her that he had not expected to feel. Katie ever-so-gently rubs across the delicate cat’s back, ooh-ing and aww-ing at her. Brian looks up and sees Sasha squinting at him with a grin spreading her lips open wide. He makes a little _what?_ quirk of his eyebrows at her, and earns a slow shake of the head.

Katie is talking earnestly to the cat, and she is purring up at her very loudly. Brian has his work cut out for him. They’re two peas in a pod already.

Katie has Margarita sit in her lap for the car ride home, despite Brian’s trepidation that she might shit all across Katie’s nice red dress. She doesn’t, she merely cuddles her nose against Katie’s neck and stares with her massive eyes and pointy ears out of the window as Katie points out each and every landmark and interesting feature of suburbia to her. 

“Do you think she knows Russian better than English? She sure looks like she does,” Brian says. Katie laughs and shakes his shoulder as he pulls into their driveway. Katie configures Margarita in her carrier and lugs her inside, leaving Brian to juggle the two heavy bags and little red bed from the pet store.

“She is sweet-tempered, peaceful, curious, smart and energetic. Just as they said she would be on alien hairless cat dot com,” Katie says. Brian laughs and follows them into the house. When Margarita is let out of her carrier she shoots off into the kitchen, and Katie of course follows. Brian is left to organize everything, listening to Katie illustrate Margarita’s new home to her in the most compassionate, motherly tone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am @ourladykatya on tumblr :)


	6. шесть

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’ve never been in a long-term relation- relationship before. And no other man or nobody before you would be here. They’d die on impact, meeting family.” She guides him deeper in. The water is nearly to their knees, and Brian spots a small green fish swimming away as if it’s life depended on it. “You know? Good boy.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm back! unfortunately i don't know when i'll be updating next after this, because my senior thesis is about to completely take over my life. but have another flashback chapter in the meantime, and savor it! <3 warnings for the usual. (also: i like to think i've done my research but i will get things wrong. if you correct me congrats, i won't change anything)

The military Jeep that Katie drives him in from airport to her parents house makes him laugh like an idiot. Oksana and Pyotr have recently retired, nearly to Siberia, on her family’s land. In the summertime, the wilderness is tranquil and beautiful. Everything is overgrown and massive. Brian stares out the window and ignores Katie’s death grip on the wheel, her dangerous turns and near constant swerving. Thankfully, there isn’t another soul on the road.

The greenery is luscious but also a little faded, as if sunshine is rare. Brian stares out the window as Katie grunts and smokes cigarette after cigarette. Finally, after an hour of precarious travel, they are making their way down a wooded path, which leads right to her parents front door. The house (more of a cabin, but not quite a dacha. A dacha remodeled for a family of seven to live well beyond their means) is painted yellow with beautiful flowers in primary colors illustrated on the white window panes. 

There is a good space cleared out around the house, a low hill just beyond that seems to jut upwards right out of the backyard. The trees around the clearing are thick, the kind of woods that beyond terrified him as a kid. It all seems quite familiar to Wisconsin. There is a visible path that leads down to the lake.

Katie turns to grin at him as she shuts off the car, leans across the dash to kiss him on the mouth. Her red lips smell of vanilla as usual, and he briefly brings his fingers to the collar of her faded green linen shirt to set it right. The linen buttons down her front are straining with her position to give him a peek of the lilies tattooed right beneath her collarbone.

“Let’s go. Mama is expecting us to be prompt, otherwise they think we are getting up to it in the car,” Katie says. Brian laughs, follows her with both of their suitcases in tow to the front door.

Katie’s hair has grown out, so much so that she has a long braid down her back. Her curls are coming out at the sides, her hair too thick to all stay in the scarf she’s tied around it. She looks delightfully disheveled, and her cheeks are red from the exhausting ride. He wishes that they were alone in the cabin for the week, if only to fuck her in every possible position with the quiet woods around them. She always looks sexiest when coming undone.

Unfortunately, Katie’s severe mother is opening the wood door before them and holding her arms out wide to embrace her daughter tightly, eyes squeezed shut and nose stuffed into her hair. Katie’s mother is shorter than her by a few inches, and Katie looks like a carbon-copy of her bar Oksana’s short, white hair and makeup-free face. 

“Katie! Oh, Katie, you have grown up,” she says into Katie’s shoulder. “I am so proud of you, coming to see us with your Brian- dear, come here.”

Brian is pulled by one of Oksana’s strong hands into the hug, allows himself to be wrapped up in her arms as well. When they are both released, he shakes her hand and follows her into the house. Katie takes his hand and he allows her to dig her fingernails into his flesh.

“Dears, I have shared bedroom for you. Come,” she waves a hand for them to follow down the hall. Her accent is thick, but no more than Katie’s. Katie looks at him with raised eyebrows, and he holds in a laugh.

“It’s so we can fuck,” Katie whispers hot in his ear. He shivers and laughs because her breath tickles.

He presses his palm to her back, allows her to tell him where to stow his suitcase, and joins her and her mother in the kitchen after taking a quick piss in the little bathroom he’s happy to see they have in their bedroom. Oksana is pouring glasses of vodka for them, and Brian can feel his eyes bug at how much she gives him. He knew it would be a long trip. Katie grins at him and circles her fingers as far as they can reach around his wrist from across the table.

Oksana toasts to him _bringing Katie home safely_ , and Brian steadfastly ignores Katie’s grunt of displeasure at the sentiment. He chokes down his vodka, and accepts the pickle Katie is pushing against his lips as a chaser. It isn’t anything he hasn’t done before, but he wishes that Katie’s family was more prone to drinking red wine.

As Katie and her mother talk a million miles a minute about anything and everything, Brian removes himself from the conversation ever so slightly to consider the kitchen around him, and the cozy living room attached. Everything is a little quirky but very European, simple but painted in flowers. Katie’s siblings aren’t due to arrive for another day.

Pyotr wanders in eventually, giving Brian the tight handshake he knew he would receive. Pyotr is a mild-mannered man, despite being wide and muscled. He looks Brian up and down as if he could eat him alive, and Brian is certain that he would, given the chance. Instead, he chats with Brian about the garden he’s been working on with his wife, and promises to show Brian each and every one of his guns later. Katie hugs him and hangs off of him, back to her mother, for hours. He humors Katie in the ways Brian has also discovered, by asking her questions and listening carefully, even though they are all speaking English and Pyotr is not best at it. 

Brian enjoys speaking with him, especially when he gets laughing, and Katie seems delighted at the two of them. And all of it is well and good, bar Oksana’s questions about how Katie is _doing_ , which kill the mood.

 

Yet, Brian should have known that once her sisters arrived Katie would change, and the already slightly tense atmosphere of the home would ratchet up many notches. Brian hugs all of them on arrival, having seen photos of them or spoken with them on the phone before. All of them speak perfect English, and all of them are whip-smart and cruel. At least, as Katie has described them, they are. In particular Masha, who has always had it out for Katie in a special way, and Olga; who knows each and every one of Katie’s secrets, thereby leaning on them for allowance in any argument. Alla; the oldest, has never done a single thing to stop any of the fighting. Viktor; Katie’s younger brother, is her favorite. Brian finds himself gravitating towards him immediately. He’s a bright, young PhD student. He leans towards Brian when he talks, and his cheeks get redder and redder as he drinks. His accent is nearly nonexistent. He has prominent freckles everywhere, and is wearing a goofy tan linen suit and a green patterned tie.

It’s very overwhelming to feel alone in a house full of seven family members, halfway across the world. He sticks with Katie or Viktor, Pyotr becoming overwhelmed by the chaos and leaving frequently to the shed out back. Katie glowers in corners and Masha elongates her neck to peer over the couch and find her. Brian can only watch as Katie is punted around as the odd one out. 

She finally separates herself from Olga, who is running her thin fingers up and down her black lace blouse and making scathing remarks; _“It’s just slutty, Katyushka. Only slutty. You need to wear things that show less of tattoos and more of brains. See me? I love black, but I dress covered. And I am still sexy. Igor says I am sexiest woman alive. Did I tell you? He is six foot seven!”_ to come join Brian and Viktor on the couch.

The three of them talk about Viktor’s career plans, and Brian is happy to see Katie perk up exponentially as the conversation goes on.

 

Katie cuts her hair off on day three. It’s four in the morning, and they’re up on a combination of vodka and jet lag, and Katie has been complaining about her sisters for an hour straight. All of the lights in the living room are on, but the room is dim. It smells like freshly-baked bread and pickled vegetables from dinner, and Katie is sipping slowly at her drink. Brian is tasked with refills. He’s growing sick of the constant vodka. Not of the taste, which has become less and less unbearable, but of the slight drunkenness he’s been feeling for three days straight.

The window is open to the sounds of the lake just down the trail, and the woods around them. The insect noises from outside lull him to almost-sleep with his head nodding onto his chest, but Katie snaps her fingers in his face to wake him up again.

When she stands and gestures for him to follow to the communal first-floor bathroom down the hall, he feels a sense of trepidation. She shuts the door behind him and makes out with him against it for a few long moments, his dick hardening ever so slightly at her hands stroking the waistband of his denim cutoffs. It’s hotter here than he’d expected, and he’s sweating as she pulls away and blows upwards to get her bangs out of her eyes.

He sits patiently on the toilet as she digs a scissors out of the cupboard and begins to chop off the lengths of her hair, section by section. She hands them to him and he dutifully places them in the trash beside the toilet. 

“Are you sorry to see it go?” He asks. He doubts it. She had grown it out painstakingly, and he supposes that now is the time for her to use it as a convenient vehicle for her own mental breakdown. 

“ _Nyet_. I’m glad to be able to get it off. Too damn hot here and if it is on my head one more second I will die,” she says. It’s exactly what he’d expected. He places a hand on the saint inked on the back of her right calf, strokes his fingers up her smooth leg to where her denim shorts begin, and where her ass hangs out beneath them just the smallest bit. She snips off the last bit of hair and turns to him.

Her hair is layered a little, with accidental cuts a bit higher, thick as ever, and her bangs hang heavy over her forehead. She’s flushed, and she settles herself on his lap as he sits on the toilet. The light above the mirror flickers a little.

“Lets go fuck in living room,” she whispers, nearly into his teeth. He shakes his head. She laughs at him, loud enough to make him nervous that someone will hear.

 

Four days later, Katie is sitting with him on the patio outside. She has an ashtray set beside the bottle she’s lugged out with them, and she’s taking shots between each cigarette she smokes. He doesn’t really know how to engage her in a more productive activity, because swimming at the lake is certainly off when she’s so drunk. He thinks he’ll take her to sit on the beach to sweat it out a little.

She also has a jar of homemade pickles that she’s using as chaser, and he’s munching on them as well, but not drinking. The current environment is much too hostile for him to justify drinking even the smallest amount, anymore. He has been well-fed, but he doesn’t want to let his guard down even slightly, especially not accidentally. Masha is somewhere inside, playing Pyotr’s old records loudly. The crackling jazz makes its way out the windows to where Brian and Katie are sitting, and Katie taps her fingers along to it on the wood slats of the tabletop.

“Babe. Would you want to come inside with me? And back me up? If I want to say something really quick to Masha. Just a quick comment. Just one,” Katie says. Her words are upsettingly slurred, and she raises her pointer finger to illustrate her point. He decides she’s had about enough. The earlier argument with Masha had been a little over-the-top, and he wants to get her out of the vicinity. He swipes the bottle from her unsteady hand and screws the lid shut. She makes a half-assed noise of discontent, but reaches for another cigarette despite the drawback.

He judges her fine to sit out alone for a moment, and rushes the bottle back into the kitchen. He’s back at her side as quickly as he can manage, and she thankfully hasn’t moved a muscle. He holds out a hand for her to grasp and she takes it, cigarette hanging loosely from between her lips. 

She sings off-key as he guides her down the dirt path to the lakeshore. The lake is more of an oversized pond, but the river that runs through it ensures that the water is clear. It’s quickly turned into one of Brian’s favorite places on earth, despite how little he’s enjoying this vacation. It is always cool and refreshing, and Katie’s sisters don’t seem to enjoy swimming much.

Katie lies down on the sand when they reach it, and Brian helps her pull off her shoes. She leans her head back and laughs loudly, screeches when his fingers slip along the tops of her feet. The scorpion tattoo on her left foot is one of his favorites. He sets her shoes beside his own in the shade, and follows her where she’s stumbling towards the water. 

“Brian. Oh my god, I’m so hot. Let’s swim,” she says. She’s speaking louder than the situation calls for. He takes both of her arms gently, strokes her biceps and takes advantage of the fact that she always falls back against him when he’s standing behind her.

“We can wade, and you’ll hang onto me. No swimming today, you’ve lost that privilege,” he says. She snorts, turns to slot her skinny arm into the crook of his elbow. She’s wearing a beat up old white t-shirt, and her nose is blossoming with freckles, and her denim cutoffs are rolled up past her underwear. Her face is glistening with oil and sunscreen, and her breath smells strongly of alcohol and pickles. She kisses him sloppily, and splashes his calves with cold water. One small foot wraps around his ankle.

“You know,” she says gravely, once she’s pulled back from his lips. He raises his eyebrows and she squints almost as if she’s forgotten what she’d meant to say already. “You know.”

“Know what?” He prompts. She laughs in his face loudly, and then gets close and intense again.

“I’ve never been in a long-term relation- relationship before. And no other man or nobody before you would be here. They’d die on impact, meeting family.” She guides him deeper in. The water is nearly to their knees, and Brian spots a small green fish swimming away as if it’s life depended on it. “You know? Good boy.”

Katie snorts again, absolutely delighted with herself. Brian can’t help but allow the warmth grow inside of him, forcing his concerned mouth into a smile despite all odds. 

She follows the fish until the water is hitting her shorts. He follows close behind, wraps an arm around her waist.

“Brian. I do not want to hurt you, but if you leave, I’ll die,” she says. Hot against his ear. She bites gently down on his earlobe. “Anna Akhmatova said that. If you leave, I’ll die. Then, she was being a little bit more serious. There was a Tsar then.”

He’s quiet, because he’s never sure how much she means things. She wraps her bare arms around his waist. He rocks her from side to side, her shape against his comforting despite how conflicting everything is here. He knows her, despite her family. He knows her well, she’s shown him everything she’s able to show, and it’s a lot of her deepest parts of self. He thinks it’s good, that they’re getting married.

 

“Katya. I wish you would shut the fuck up for one second, I swear to god the brain damage. It’s obnoxious and I would recommend you quit trying to put two and two together, you’re so fucked in the head.”

Olga smokes cloves inside, her slick jet-black hair and thin pale skin make quite an impact with her usual deep purple lipstick. Brian has only ever seen her in black turtleneck t-shirts. Tonight for dinner she’s paired it with a black patent leather miniskirt. Seems hypocritical. Her chunky black glasses are propped up on her head, wine and cigarette in hand. Pyotr claps his hands, making Brian jump a little, and Olga squints at him with her pale blue eyes.

“What?! You cannot deny it, she’s screwed herself over with the drugs and the running around… All I’m saying is truth. Mama! More sausage please. I’m starved,” Olga is the smallest of her siblings. She must be 5 feet at the tallest, and that she is just as skinny as the rest of her sisters makes her seem both ethereal and evil. Katie has an entire collection of horror stories about her, being the sister closest to her in age. They’ve gone from best of friends to worst of enemies upwards of five times, apparently.

Katie is gripping Brian’s wrist deathly tight. He can’t argue with her or bring himself to suggest that she limits consumption tonight, passes her the bottle of vodka that’s out half-empty on the coffee table, right beside Pyotr’s books on military operations and Kalashnikovs. Three days left. Brian is counting down the minutes.

Her fingers wave in front of his face and he starts before turning to her and fishing his lighter out of his pocket to light the cigarette firm between her lips. He’s been carrying one because she’s been losing hers. She’s been convincing him to smoke more on this trip than he ever has in all his life before now. She kisses him on the lips after taking her first drag, and he strokes gentle fingers beneath her chin. He leaves his hand resting on the back of her neck when she pulls away.

The thick navy blue and red lampshades don’t do much to cut through the growing cloud of smoke. Brian strokes his fingers through Katie’s cropped hair. She leans her head back to encourage him, and he’s glad for something to do. He wishes someone would open a window, or the porch door.

“You know, Olga? I wish you had fucking died in the womb,” Katie says lowly. Brian’s heart skips a beat. He had hoped she’d stay quiet, but didn’t expect her to shut up and take it, either.

Now that Brian has had time to really observe Katie’s family, he’s decided that he hates the quiet jabs much more than the screaming fights. Mainly because when Katie is screaming and crying it's easier to justify leading her into another room to let her cry it out onto his stomach and slap the mattress. 

“Girls. No.” Alla’s footsteps creak on the hardwood as she enters with a towel wrapped around her naked body and another around her hair. She’s always off somewhere, either visiting old friends in town or floating on a blow up raft on the lake. “Can someone crack a window, please? This is disgusting. Mamochka-”

Oksana obliges, without an ounce of displeasure on her features. Brian doesn’t know how she seems to have such objective views of all of her obnoxious children. He knows that if his siblings had acted like this, his mother would have smacked them all upside the head and had them go do all of the yardwork. It’s what they’d get for not having a father. Pyotr stands, storms to the kitchen, and grabs a warm beer from the counter. Katie had told Brian to never ask for ice. He still doesn’t understand why.

Alla takes a sandwich from the counter and walks back to her room without another word. Always traveling somewhere, probably to post a picture of herself wrapped in the towel on her instagram story. Brian’s seen her page. Sixty some thousand followers seems like a joke, but he knows to never underestimate Katie’s sisters in all their chaos, especially not Alla, with her three secret children she keeps as far away from her family as she can.

Katie’s inked arm drapes across his stomach, and she nuzzles her face against his neck. Olga turns on the TV, flips through the channels at a pace so quick that Brian shuts his eyes. The low hum of the room and Katie’s welcome weight atop him makes him drift off to sleep.

 

Later that night, in bed, Brian’s hands are on Katie’s naked breasts when he changes his mind, hugs her close to him.

“Don’t you hate it? Why are we here,” he says. He can’t make his voice raise in question, is finding it hard to connect with her while there is so much interference. Her eyes are clouded over, and she props her chin on his bare chest to address him. She’s still rubbing his erection ever so slightly with her thigh.

“Because. I’m a family woman. I miss it here when I am gone, you know? I do not know if I belong in Russia or in Boston,” she says. Her teeth clench. He brushes along her jaw with soft fingertips. “I love you.”

“I love you too.” He watches her and doesn’t speak. He wishes she would be more open with him about what’s going on in her head. But her face changes, and he thinks she may be, soon.

“It was much worse the times you weren’t here. Having you here makes me feel better. You know I hate my sisters but I love my Papa and I don’t know about Mama but. I love you the most out of anyone in the world, and I don’t know what I even did before you came here with me. I think I was drunk,” she whispers.

He’s still hard, and her fingers crawl down his stomach that’s been stuffed with bread and alcohol ever since they arrived, poking him so that he twitches, and finally wraps her thin fingers around him.

“I love your penis,” she whispers. He snorts, but her face is dead serious. “Look into my eyes.”

He does. They’re gray in the darkness. Her nose casts a sharp shadow across her face. He traces her collarbone. She leans down to kiss his hand, and encourages him to slide two fingers into her mouth.

She talks to him with his fingers stuffing her mouth full, gliding across her teeth and pushing her tongue down so that she gags in the middle of a sentence. It’s half-indiscernible, half-Russian, her bangs falling in front of her eyes. 

Brian aches all over when she releases her grip on him and climbs up to him, aches until she settles herself onto his dick. As she lowers painfully slowly onto him, he takes her face in his hands and just watches her. She’s slack-jawed, a welcome difference from how she speaks about her family, her blinking eyes rolling back ever so slightly as he fucks into her.

They lie tangled after. Katie pokes his belly button.

“Can I read you? The poem I was talking about at the lake? I know you think I was too drunk to remember. But I remember,” she says. He nods, and she reaches over to the shelf beside the bed to flick on the light, to take a heavy book up from the shelf beneath it. “Ok. I will find it.”

He waits as she flips through the pages. It’s a translation of poetry into English, and he imagines Katie reading this as a desperately sad teenager, taking herself much too seriously. She finds the poem, holds the book apart with both hands earnestly.

 _“Under her dark veil she wrung her hands…”_ Her voice is deep, crackling with their kisses and moans just seconds before. 

_““Why are you so pale today?”_

_“Because I made him drink of stinging grief_

_Until he got drunk on it._

 

_How can I forget? He staggered out,_

_His mouth twisted in agony…_

_I ran down not touching the bannister_

_And caught up with him at the gate._

 

_Panting, I cried: ‘A joke!_

_That’s all it was. If you leave, I’ll die.’_

_He smiled calmly and grimly_

_And told me: ‘Don’t stand there in the wind.’””_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the poem was written by anna akhmatova in 1911, and was translated by judith hemschemeyer! and was the inspiration for finishing this chapter lol


	7. семь

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Brian. Dad,” she grunts. He’s on his knees, then, his heart is bursting. 
> 
> “Oh,” he says. His heart is melted into a puddle. 
> 
> “I love you,” she says. _“I love you,”_ in Russian. Hands on his head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is sad! edited minimally because i have a sunburn that has reached my eyes. enjoy! there will likely be anywhere from 1-3 chapters left of this lol.
> 
> warnings for very detailed depictions of a panic attack and mentions of suicide. please take care of yourselves, this isn't that important. go drink some water instead !
> 
> EDIT: thank you all so much for the nice comments! my senior year kicked my ass but i will be so happy to catch up with everyone once my thesis is finished (in three days!)
> 
> [my patreon](https://www.patreon.com/ourladyellen)

Katya’s back is aching. Despite all of the good the cat is doing in giving her something to focus on, Brian can see that despite it she is fraying at the edges.

“I think, baby, I think they’d want to sedate me if I’d go into the hospital. I’m not saying for the birth,” she whispers as she rubs Margarita’s back gently. “I’m saying if they got me in, checked me in, I’d be in a straightjacket in a minute. Not to be crazy!”

She sticks out her bottom lip in an exaggerated pout and lets Margarita rest one wrinkled paw on her knee. 

Katie has taken to wearing Brian’s t-shirts and no pants. She entirely refuses to wear maternity clothes. She’s still hardly gained any weight; she’s never really been able to do so, but her thighs and breasts are blooming. Her skin is soft and sensitive, she doesn’t have to beg him to rub her feet at any given moment. He can see her needs coming a mile away.

“Brian,” she draws his name out long and anguished. He’s sitting at the end of the couch in seconds, her toes between his fingers. “Fuck you, that hurts. They won’t put me on meds.”

“I know. Remember? We talked about this at the beginning,” he says. Katie whimpers and rubs her eyes with the heels of her palms. Margarita noses at her belly. It’s huge, Brian wishes for his son to be out and his wife to be comfortable again. If she’s begging to be medicated, it must be worse than she’s letting him in on. They have talked about this many times. If she wants that help, it’s her job to get it. “I’m sorry. For what it’s worth, I think it wouldn’t really help so much.”

Katie scratches Margarita’s delicate head. Her eyes are red from rubbing, her cheeks are flushed and her hair is growing down past her shoulders in loose waves. It’s shining and soft, and Brian has been running his fingers through it to help her to sleep when she’s uncomfortable.

“Do you want to try to go to that class we were thinking about? I think you’d have fun with other women, like, who are having babies,” Brian says. Katie’s eyes flick to him from the cat. Her brows furrow and the fear of God is struck into him.

“I’m not like other women who are having babies,” she says coldly. He huffs, continues to rub along her arches. She’s loosening up against the pillow, despite the front of discomfort she’s putting up. “What would I talk to them about? Like, what would they have to say to me. Can you get tattoos when you’re pregnant?”

She reaches for her phone on the coffee table and grunts in frustration- trying to dodge the cat and her own stomach. Brian calmly sits up and hands it to her.

“Fuck,” she mumbles after a couple of minutes. Brian decides not to push it. She rests her phone on her chest and pulls her hair up into a ponytail. And then, ten minutes of silence and purring later: “Brian.”

“Yep!” He’s nearly fallen asleep rubbing her ankles. She pats her belly ever so gently. He’s gotten good at forcing positivity.

“I want to go to yoga,” she says. How she can complain at such length about something he’s suggested and then moments later agree to it as if it was her idea all along is beyond him.

He’d found a prenatal yoga class at Katie’s usual studio just the other day and had asked her immediately if she’d like to try- she’d been keeping up with Ashtanga until she absolutely couldn’t, and was now bursting at the seams with untapped energy.

 _“I hate you,”_ she says to him in Russian. It’s one of her many-used phrases, one that she usually says when she wants to fuck, or wants him to do her a favor. He raises his eyebrows and she reaches out a hand to him. He pulls her up off the couch, Margarita yowling on the floor.

“You are fine, kitty,” Katie says. “What time is class?” 

Brian runs a hand down her back, squeezes her ass just softly. “An hour. An hour until we’d need to leave.”

“You need to eat me out,” she says. He’s gotten a little paranoid about fucking her. Not enough that he’s stopped, but enough that she’s noticed it. She’s very smart. “You _need_ to eat my pussy. I’m so fucking wet.”

He doesn’t think that she knows that she grifts porn dialogue, making it sound completely natural in her own voice. It must be her accent, and how she truly means it, and then he’s listening closely and doing her bidding gladly. Or that she just thinks it’s how one must always talk in bed. She says things frankly because they’re honest, not because they’re dirty. She’s dirty enough.

“Brian. Dad,” she grunts. He’s on his knees, then, his heart is bursting. 

“Oh,” he says. His heart is melted into a puddle. 

“I love you,” she says. _“I love you,”_ in Russian. Hands on his head. “I’m not going to kill myself.”

“Yeah. Okay,” he says. “I know. I know you aren’t.” He’s squeezing his eyes shut and her fingers stroke across his cheeks. His hands circle her belly. Their baby inside of her, growing, and his fingers moving to the waistband of her panties.

“I cannot stand up anymore,” she says. He stands on shaking knees, takes her warm hand and brings her to the bedroom. She breathes more heavily while pregnant. He loves her. He turns to face her and she’s flushed red, all down her neck. 

“God. You’re beautiful,” he says. It falls out of him, heavy and choking. She laughs, wraps strong fingers in a vice around his wrist. “Come to bed.”

“Yeah.”

She lies on her back as he strokes up and down her pussy- as gently and as slowly as he can. She’s heaving breaths, he cannot see her face behind her stomach. Her hands are scraping up her own thighs, anguished for any kind of intensity. Her red boyshorts are stretched across her hips. His fingers are against the dark red wet spot at her opening. Her pussy is burning hot, even through her underwear. 

“You’re so hot. Burning me, Katie,” he mumbles. She answers in a high whine, one she would never release were she not absolutely done with him.

“I can’t even see you, I can only feel you, please Brian.” He groans. “I don’t want to miss this yoga class.”

The nerve of her. It has him pulling her underwear down anyways.

 

Katya bends and sways around him, and his hands on her body feel reverent and lonely. It seems like he’s disconnected from her. He wants her to twirl back around in the moonlight so he can see her belly. 

She’s been sleeping facing him. Her face is fuller, but he knows that once the baby comes she’ll be losing weight so fast it’ll be as if she was tearing it from her own body. As if it were that easy. It is for her. She moves with ease, and her brain doesn’t hinder her.

But tonight she is turned away from him. The room is usually pitch black, she can’t sleep with any whisper of light. She’d had awful insomnia when she’d first moved in with him, and it’d led to him waking up to her eating ice cream in the kitchen at six am. Now, she’s been doing much better, and despite her discomfort he thinks that all of the intense feelings she’s experiencing during the day have tired her out through her pregnancy and put her to sleep- until now.

Nearing eight months, she’s tossing and turning again, up in the middle of the night reading poetry with a book light as dim as she can get it so as not to wake him. He pretends that he is asleep for her peace of mind. 

Tonight is different, as are all nights. She’s sighing, and then he hears her fumbling at the bedside table, and the light is on, he’s covering his eyes with the sheet.

Yoga went well. It was challenging enough for Katie to be satisfied, but also frustratingly easy in some aspects. He kept holding in awful snorts at her looks of disdain to the other couples in the room. She was a terror, consistently weird and annoying. It was good to get her around strangers. The good energy has been sucked from the room now.

“Dad?” She whispers. He blinks, and surfaces.

“Yeah, Mom?” He asks. Her hair is falling over her eyes in tight curls, just out of the shower-dried, and her eyes are wide and dark blue in the lamplight. She smiles at him, though, despite the little crease between her eyebrows. 

“Can we talk?” He nods, sits up and shifts the blanket to his waist. He crosses his legs and turns so that he’s facing her, so she doesn’t have to move. He brings a palm to her stomach, and feels a gentle kick from his son. Katie rests her own hand, smaller and paler and inked at the wrist, atop his. 

He thinks it’s best to wait for her. She confirms this by sighing and looking down at the bed. Margarita is curled up in her little red bed by the bedroom door, sleeping soundly. He waits, rubbing the sheet between his thumb and pointer finger. He’s a little groggy, and he blinks and yawns as Katie gathers her thoughts.

“I…” She starts. Then she stops, swallows, looks at him in askance. He uncrosses his legs and slots himself beside her, head on her shoulder, arm around her. He links their fingers on her belly. He is pressed up against her, forever the big spoon and forever the one who will need her most.

“It’s okay,” he says. She shivers, and then she begins to sob almost silently. “It’s okay.”

“I don’t know, I am not good enough to be a mother. I’m going to hurt baby,” she says. She’s speaking so quietly, and he can feel her chest move with her breath at his cheek. His head pounds, and he brings fingers to her cheekbone to wipe tears without looking. She drops the definite article when she gets upset. He wishes he was fluent in Russian for her. He’s trying his best to study, so that maybe by the next time she’s hit a low, he’ll be able to listen better.

“No, you aren’t. And even if you were, I’d be here to stop you,” he says. Her entire body tenses with a shudder. She’s shaking uncontrollably now, her teeth are chattering. “I promise. I’ll watch you.”

“Okay, but he needs his Mama… I’m his Mama. And I am not good enough, I never wanted to have kids, and I love you and I thought it was such a nice thing, to have baby, because I love you, I thought it was enough,” she cries. It’s making him shake a little, too, feeling like he’s betrayed her for not telling her she couldn’t bear it, or pushing her for more therapy sooner, or listening harder when she was going overboard, or not putting a condom on when she was standing naked in the living room when he came home from the store that day (it is his fucking fault, and only his), or eating her out so eagerly and encouraging her every whim, even and especially when they seemed too far-fetched to be grounded in any kind of reality.

But he’s propping himself up on his elbow. Looking into her eyes, hand still on her belly. They can’t turn back now, and they’re not going to, and she doesn’t want to. But this is her reality right now, and he has to see her through it. It’s his reality too, for her. He’s happily living in her world.

“Katie.” Her eyes are shut tight. “Katie, look into my eyes please, Katie.” 

She opens her eyes, and tears spill out of them over her round cheeks, her pointed nose, her sharp chin. Her mouth is hanging open, and they pool inside, on her tongue. 

“Okay. I’m looking at you, okay,” she says. “I’m sorry.”

“No, you can’t be sorry,” he says. She shakes her head rapidly.

“I have fucking brain damage, of course I can be sorry. His Mama has brain damage, he’s going to hate me,” she sobs. He can tell that she’s about to become incoherent, and he takes it upon himself to let go of her completely and pull the sheets back so that she can cool down. She’s pulling at the neck of her tank top, and he gently brings his fingers to the hem of it, pulls it over her head, ignoring the sharp gasp she takes when it covers her face.

“Katie, you have to breathe. _Katya_.” She shakes her head again, brings hands to her hair and twists her curls around her fingers. “Katya. Hey.”

“I think I need a break,” she says. Her voice cracks, and he almost reaches to her, but there’s a pit deep in his stomach that’s stopping him. “Everything hurts. I think I’m hurting him. Baby Borja, fuck me, fuck me, I’m a horrible mother.”

She’s curled in on herself, as much as she can this pregnant. He wants to lose it- he wants it so badly, and he thinks that he’s crying, but he can’t be sure. He wants to punch a hole in the wall and call it done. He wishes that he could be cared for like he does her, sometimes. He’s never talked to her at length about his own brain chemistry, because hers has always meant the most to him. He’s never wanted to think about himself until now, and now is the only time he cannot.

So, instead, he sits with her to make sure that she doesn’t leave the bed. He gently caresses her hand until she’s loosened her muscles, and when he thinks it’s been enough time for her to cool off, he works to talk her down a little. This hardly ever works, but it does help her internalize his voice, he thinks. 

“Katie, I need to you take a deep breath,” he says. She tries, and then her eyes are flashing up at him, pale and angry.

“You really don’t give a single fuck, do you?” He’s stunned into complete silence. Katie is straightening up and holding her belly with both hands, stroking across it almost so as to calm the baby despite her tweaking hormones. “I know you don’t. I can see right through you.”

He remains silent. His spine is lit up on fire, and his toes are tingling asleep beneath his ankles. She’s staring him down, nostrils flaring, and he’s at a loss. But his heart is pounding, and he wishes desperately and quickly that she’ll come down to Earth and be with him, or be joking. She isn’t, he’s never seen her like this before.

“Katenka,” he whispers. Making his voice low and soft. He pulls it from deep inside himself, trying his deepest to appear non-threatening. She shakes her head, wipes her tears furiously.

“Shut up. Sleep on the couch,” she growls. His heart drops. But he does it, rifles around in the linen closet at the end of the hall for blankets. He thrashes around on the too-soft cushions, staring up at the black ceiling for hours. There is no sound coming from the bedroom. He tries to tamp down the hot guilt that’s boiling up in his throat until he passes out, exhausted from clenching every insignificant muscle.

 

Katie is gone when he wakes.

He takes five deep breaths as he waits for Violet’s phone to go to message. It feels like it’s been ringing forever. 

“Hello? Brian?” Violet is grumbling in his ear. He doubts she ever rises before eleven. It’s seven-thirty.

“Yes, hey Vi. I was just curious if Katie’s texted you at all,” he says. He wants to keep it vague, doesn’t want to cause any trouble if it’s less than he thinks it is.

“What? What do you mean? It’s the fucking crack of dawn, is everything-”

“I don’t know, okay. She’s not doing so well, I slept on the couch and I should have stayed up, maybe. I don’t know where she is,” he says. His panic levels are rising now that he’s waking up a bit more. 

“Wait, okay. Brian, let me see if she’s texted me first. Stay calm, none of this is in any way your fault. I’m putting you on speaker now, hang on.” The audio goes tinny. He can hear the clicks of Violet’s nails on her screen. “I have a text from her. You know her well.”

“Thank god. From this morning?”

“Last night. _Going to pray tomorrow. Not feeling so good, Vi. Demons watching over me_. Seems pretty extreme, babe.”

Brian’s head is a hot air balloon. “I know. I’ll go fetch her, probably. I just hope she’s talking to someone at church, and that they haven’t done anything with her.”

He is filled with dread, but trusts Katie’s church friends to keep her at least mostly safe. He also knows well that she finds immense comfort in prayer, particularly when her symptoms are this intense. Hopefully she’s kneeling at the cross, wearing a veil, safe and sound.

Violet hangs up with an exhausted _I love you_ , and he is off in last night’s t-shirt and jeans.


End file.
